╣PARA ▒PAR@ ` æTEXT ` âSeverance, Caroline Maria Seymour
1820╨1914
reformer and clubwoman
Born on January 12, 1820, in Canandaigua, New York, Caroline Seymour grew up there and from 1824 in nearby Auburn. She attended a series of private girls╒ schools and graduated from the Female Seminary of Geneva, New York, in 1835. She taught in similar schools until her marriage in August 1840 to Theodoric C. Severance, a banker with whom she settled in Cleveland. From her husband╒s family she quickly absorbed an interest in the various reform movements of the day╤temperance, abolition, women╒s rights, and others╤and together they helped form the liberal Independent Christian Church. She attended women╒s-rights conventions in Akron in 1851 and in Syracuse, New York, in 1852, and in May 1853 she presided over the first convention of the Ohio Woman╒s Rights Association. Also in 1853 she read a paper on ╥Humanity; a Definition and a Plea╙ before the Mercantile Library Association of Cleveland; she was subsequently invited to repeat the address in the Theodore Parker Fraternity Lecture Course in Boston. In May 1854 she presented the Ohio legislature with a memorial asking for property rights for women.
In 1855 Severance and her husband moved to Boston, whose intellectual atmosphere she found much to her liking. She became a frequent lecturer on abolitionism. In 1862 she was named to the board of directors of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, newly founded by her friend, Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. In 1866 she joined Susan B. Anthony in organizing the American Equal Rights Association, and in 1867 she joined Lucretia Mott and others in forming the Free Religious Association. In February 1868, after some months of discussion with friends, she led in founding the New England Women╒s Club, which preceded New York╒s Sorosis by a month as a pioneer organization for women. She served as president until 1871 (when she was succeeded by Julia Ward Howe). Through the club she helped establish the Girls╒ Latin School of Boston and worked to secure the election of women to the city school board. In 1869 Severance joined Lucy Stone in organizing the American Woman Suffrage Association.
In 1875 she and her husband moved again, this time to Los Angeles where they founded the first Unitarian congregation in that city. In 1876 she invited Emma Marwedel to establish the California Model Kindergarten and the Pacific Model Training School for Kindergartners in Los Angeles. In 1878 she organized a women╒s club in the Unity Church, but it lapsed in 1880 when she was absent for a time. It was again active as the Los Angeles Woman╒s Club in 1885╨1888. In 1885 she founded the Los Angeles Free Kindergarten Association. In 1891 she formed a third women╒s club, the Friday Morning Club, of which she was president for three years. The Friday Morning Club became an active force behind numerous movements for reform. In 1900╨1904 she served as president of the reactivated Los Angeles County Woman Suffrage League. In 1911, at the age of ninety-one, she was the first woman to register to vote under California╒s new woman suffrage law. She died in Los Angeles on November 10, 1914,
