Lizzie Crozier French

Lizzie Crozier French
Photograph from the History of the Woman's Club Movement in America (1898)
Born	Margaret Elizabeth Crozier (1851-05-07)May 7, 1851 Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Died	May 14, 1926(1926-05-14) (aged 75) Washington, D.C., USA
Resting place	Old Gray Cemetery Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Alma mater	Convent of the Visitation
Occupation	Educator, activist
Spouse(s)	William Baxter French
Children	William Williams French
Parent(s)	John Hervey Crozier and Mary Williams

Margaret Elizabeth Crozier French (May 7, 1851 – May 14, 1926) was an American educator, women's suffragist and social reform activist. She was one of the primary leaders in the push for women's rights in Tennessee in the early 1900s, and helped the state become the 36th state to certify the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women the right to vote, in 1920. She also founded the Ossoli Circle, the oldest federated women's club in the South, and led efforts to bring coeducation to the University of Tennessee.

Lizzie Crozier was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1851, one of the five daughters of John H. Crozier and Mary Williams Crozier. Her father was a politician who had served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1837 to 1839, representing Knox County, and who had represented Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1845 to 1849. Young Lizzie Crozier grew up in a home full of books and was educated at the Convent of the Visitation in Georgetown and later at a private Episcopal school for young women in Columbia, Tennessee.

Since John H. Crozier supported the Confederacy, the Crozier family was forced to move several times during the Civil War to evade encroaching Union forces, but returned to Knoxville in 1867. Around 1870, Lizzie Crozier starred alongside future author Frances Hodgson Burnett in a performance of She Stoops to Conquer. In 1872, she married William Baxter French, the cashier of the wholesaling giant, Cowan, McClung and Company. Her husband died just 18 months after the marriage, and she was never to marry again. The couple had one child, a son named William Williams French.