Call Number:

C0117

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 9 boxes
• 5.15 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Mary A. Livermore Collection, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1768-1928 (inclusive) and 1846-1905 (bulk)

Creator:

Princeton University. Library. Special Collections and Livermore, Mary A. (Mary Ashton) (1820-1905)

Form:

Correspondence -- 19th century, Glass plate negatives. -- 19th century, Lectures -- 19th century, and Photographs -- 19th century.

Abstract:

Consists of two collections of materials created by or related to American suffragette and reformer Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905), including autograph notes, drafts, typescripts, and reprints of lectures, addresses, articles, and short stories by Livermore; correspondence; family documents and photographs; and clippings and printed materials, some of which were collected by Adelaide Witherington Boynton.

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905) of Boston, Massachusetts, was an American suffragette and reformer. In 1845 she married Reverend Daniel Parker Livermore, and together they co-edited the New Covenant, a church periodical, from 1857 to 1869. Livermore was a proponent of the temperance cause and an activist in the women's suffrage movement. For a number of years, she was president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and honorary president of the Massachusetts Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Her philanthropic work with such groups as the Boston Women's Educational and Industrial and the Woman's Relief Corps was lauded by her contemporaries. Founder and editor of The Agitator and the Woman's Journal (1869-1872), Livermore became a spokesman for woman's suffrage. Twice she was selected as a delegate to the Massachusetts State Republican Convention, where she presented temperance and suffrage resolutions which were incorporated into the party platform. As a lecturer at the Redpath Lyceum Bureau in Boston, she spoke regularly for audiences of "mothers, teachers, and clergymen."

The Mary A. Livermore Collection was formed by combining two separately acquired groups of material. The "Writings by Mary A. Livermore and Others" file group consists of autograph notes, drafts, typescripts, and reprints of several lectures, articles and short stories by or pertaining to Mary Livermore together with manuscripts of poetry by Hezekiah Butterworth and Lillie J. Davis.

Materials collected by Adelaide Witherington Boynton, a family member of Livermore, include correspondence (to, from, and about Mary Livermore, together with letters of the Witherington family), two memoranda books belonging to Mary Livermore, financial records, and other miscellaneous documents. The majority of the material in this part of the collection, however, consists of early or finished autograph drafts of Livermore's lectures and addresses on various historical topics, woman's suffrage, temperance, religion, and anthropology. Also included are some periodicals, pamphlets, and clippings pertaining to, written and/or collected by Livermore, as well as photographs and glass plate negatives of family portraits and pictures from Livermore's European travels.