Caroline Maria Seymour Severance, daughter of a bank officer, was born in Canandaigua, New York in 1820. She graduated as valedictorian from Miss Record's Female Seminary in 1835 at age fifteen and served on the faculty of Auburn Female Seminary. She married Ohio banker Theodore C. Severance in 1840 and settled in Cleveland where, after hearing lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, she became increasingly committed to social justice and peace. Severance lectured and published on women's rights and participated actively in the abolitionist movement throughout the 1850s. She moved to the Boston area in 1855. While living in Massachusetts she served on the board of New England Hospital; founded the New England Woman's Club with Julia Ward Howe and Ednah D. Cheney, among others, in 1868; and organized the American Association for the Advancement of Women. In 1875 Severance moved again, this time to Los Angeles, where she organized the Los Angeles Women's Club in 1878. Caroline Severance died in 1914 at the age of 95.
From the guide to the Caroline Maria Seymour Severance Papers MS 145., 1861-1920, (Sophia Smith Collection)
