Caroline Severance

Caroline M. Seymour Severance (1820–1914) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, and founder of women’s clubs.

Caroline Severance was born in Canandaigua, New York, the daughter of a banker, Orson Seymour, and his wife Caroline M. Clarke. After a conservative upbringing, she married Theodoric C. Severance, who was called T.C., an abolitionist banker from Cleveland, Ohio. She became the mother of five children, one of whom died in infancy. She credited her marriage with turning her into a social activist. Caroline Severance became an abolitionist and a pioneering activist for women’s rights and social justice. She was the founder of the New England Women’s Club in 1868, the first of its kind, a place where women could meet to discuss social issues, literature, and art, as well as direct their efforts towards the betterment of society as a whole. Having devoted her life to the creation and support of organizations for women, she moved to Los Angeles in 1875, where she was known as “The Mother of Clubs.”

In 1853, after several years of attending and speaking at conventions on behalf of woman’s rights, she made her first appearance as a speaker to the general public with a speech to Cleveland’s Mercantile Library Association, the first lecture delivered there by a woman. Her subject was “Humanity: A Definition and a Plea,” by which she meant that women should be included as part of “humanity.” It was a radical idea, but the speech was well received by the audience, and by the Cleveland press.

Having moved with her family to Boston in 1855, Caroline Severance was active in the years before the Civil War in organizations ranging from the Boston Anti-Slavery Society to the New England Hospital for Women and Children. Attracted by the powerful sermons of Theodore Parker in Boston, the Severances joined the Unitarian Church. Caroline remained active in both local and national women’s rights organizations, which had begun to focus on the subject of woman suffrage. After the war was over, along with many other abolitionist/suffragists, Caroline Severance split from the more radical suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony over the issue of whether woman suffrage should take precedence over suffrage for black men. While still remaining a committed suffragist, Caroline Severance began to explore other ideas for the advancement of women.

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