Narcissa Adelaide (Avery) Claflin, 1846-1931

Adelaide Avery Claflin was born Narcissa Adelaide Avery in Boston, Mass. She married Frederic A. Claflin in 1870; they had a son and three daughters.

AAC began lecturing on woman suffrage in 1883 and appeared with Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe. A Unitarian minister ordained at Meadville, Pa., in 1897, she was on the executive board of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and a member of the Boston Equal Suffrage League. AAC published articles and editorials in Boston newspapers and in the Woman's Journal ; she was also a member of the Quincy School Committee and of the Boston Castilian Club, which promoted interest in Spanish poetry.

For additional biographical information, see the Adelaide Avery Claflin collection (A/C583) at the Schlesinger Library, and A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore (Buffalo, N.Y.: C.W. Moulton, 1893), pp. 175-76, which is also available on microfilm: Research Publications, Inc., The History of Women, 1979, Reel 620, no. 4940.

From the guide to the Woman's Rights Collection (WRC), (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)