Mary Ashton (Rice) Livermore

Born:  December 19, 1820, Boston, Massachusetts

Died:  May 23, 1905, Melrose, Massachusetts

Resting Place:  Wyoming Cemetery, Melrose, Massachusetts

Brief History:  Mary Rice attended the Female Seminary in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she remained to teach for two years after her graduation in 1836. From 1839 to 1842 she was a tutor on a Virginia plantation, and the experience made her an ardent foe of slavery. During these pre-war years, Mary also became known for her involvement in the temperance movement, which especially thrived after her marriage to fellow temperance supporter and Universalist minister, Daniel Parker Livermore. After her marriage Mary began to write for newspapers, and most of her writings called for religious and temperance reform. Livermore and her husband moved to Chicago in 1857 and began a long stint of editing a Unitarian paper called the New Covenant. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Mary Livermore worked as a volunteer with the Chicago Sanitary Commission. She was one of those that helped organize the great fair in 1863, at Chicago, when nearly $100,000 was raised and for which she obtained the original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation from President Lincoln, which was sold for $3,000, and funded the building of the Soldiers' Home.

In 1869, the year that women suffragists in the Equal Rights Association spilt over the issue of voting rights for African American men, Livermore sided with Lucy Stone and those founding the American Woman Suffrage Association. She became the first vice president of the AWSA, and later held the position of president from 1878 to 1895. She also helped found the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. During this time, her dedication to the temperance movement continued; she served as president of the Massachusetts Woman's Christian Temperance Union from 1875 to 1885. In 1899, Daniel Livermore died. Mary Livermore turned to spiritualism to try to contact her husband, and, through a medium, believed that she had made contact with him. She also wrote for numerous reform periodicals and spoke on behalf of liberal causes all over the country. Her death in 1905 marked an end to a long and fruitful career of public service.