Caroline Maria Seymour Severance papers
Scope and Contents
The Severance Papers include a small amount of biographical material about Caroline Seymour Severance; some correspondence; two photographs of Jesse Benton Fremont; a book about the women's club movement; Caroline Severance's guest book, and a scrapbook kept by Caroline Severance's daughter, Julia Long Severance (Burrage).
The guest book and scrapbook include autographs, quotations, notes, correspondence, drawings, photographs, and memorabilia of many notable abolitionists, woman's rights advocates, and members of the women's club movement. Louisa May Alcott, A. Bronson Alcott, Catharine Beecher, Alice Stone Blackwell, Lydia Maria Child, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Sarah Grimke, Julia Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Booker T. Washington, John Greenleaf Whittier are included, among many others.
Dates of Materials
- Creation: 1860 - 1945
Creator
- Severance, Caroline Maria Seymour (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for use without restriction beyond the standard terms and conditions of Smith College Special Collections.
Conditions Governing Use
Materials in this collection may be governed by copyright. For reproductions of materials that are governed by fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. Researchers are responsible for determining who may hold materials' copyrights and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from Smith College Special Collections to move forward with their use.
Biographical / Historical
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.
Extent
0.438 linear feet (1 container)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
Caroline Maria Seymour Severance was a New England Woman's Club leader, women's rights activist, and abolitionist. The Severance papers include a small amount of biographical material, two photographs of Jesse Benton Fremont, a book about the women's club movement, Caroline Severance's guest book, and a scrapbook kept by Caroline Severance's daughter, Julia Long Severance (Burrage). The guest book and scrapbook include autographs, quotations, notes, correspondence, drawings, photographs, and memorabilia of many notable persons. Louisa May Alcott, A. Bronson Alcott, Catharine Beecher, Alice Stone Blackwell, Lydia Maria Child, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Sarah Grimke, Julia Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Booker T. Washington, John Greenleaf Whittier are included, among many others.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Caroline Maria Seymour Severance papers were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection in 1950-53 by Caroline's granddaughter, Caroline S. Burrage.
Subject
- Severance, Julia (Person)
- New England Women's Club (Organization)
- Severance, Caroline Maria Seymour (Person)
Source
- Burrage, Caroline S. (Donor, Person)
Genre / Form
Topical
- Title
- Finding aid to the Caroline Maria Seymour Severance papers
- Status
- Legacy Finding Aid (Updated)
- Author
- Finding aid prepared by mnsss.
- Date
- 2003
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2005-09-23: mnsss158 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02-5c.xsl (sy2003-10-15).
- 2017-07-26T17:48:11-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
- 2019-04-08: Made paper FA pencil edit changes and updated finding aid.
Repository Details
Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository
