Caroline Maria Seymour Severance Papers

The collection includes manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera dealing the following subjects: African American women suffrage and clubs, Susan B. Anthony, Jessie Benton Frémont, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia Ward Howe, child labor reform, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Fröbel and the Kindergarten movement, Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, Helen Modjeska, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, dress reform, suffrage, temperance, Unitarianism, women's rights, women's clubs, and the history, politics and social life of 19th and 20th century Los Angeles, California.

The collection consists of:

Manuscripts (Boxes 1-7):

The collection contains 631 manuscripts, 525 of which are by Caroline Severance. The manuscripts are comprised of speeches, essays, articles, notebooks, commonplace books, poems, and miscellaneous notes (there is also one diary of Caroline Severance). The manuscripts with titles are arranged alphabetically by author and title; however, the majority of Severance's speeches and essays do not have titles so they are arranged by subject and then arranged alphabetically by first line. Severance's manuscripts are mostly incomplete handwritten drafts. Also included in the manuscripts is a 347-page, unpublished autobiographical monograph by Caroline Severance entitled "Own Story," which spans the majority of her life. The subjects covered in the manuscripts are: African-American women suffrage and clubs, Jessie Benton Frémont, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia Ward Howe, kindergarten, Lulu Pile Little, Los Angeles, Helena Modjeska, Lucretia Mott, the peace movement, politics and labor unions, reform movements, religion, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, suffrage and women, temperance, women's clubs, and women's rights.

Correspondence (Boxes 8-58):

There are 10,634 pieces of correspondence, of which Caroline Severance writes only 232; most of her correspondence is made up of incomplete drafts of letters. The majority of the correspondence in the collection is addressed to Caroline Severance and includes letters written by more than 1,700 different authors.

Notable authors include (piece counts in parenthesis): Susan B. Anthony (3); Rachel Foster Avery (2); Susan Look Avery (35); Alice Stone Blackwell (5); Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell (5); Elizabeth Blackwell (1); Henry Browne Blackwell (4); Jeanne C. Smith Carr (3); Carrie Chapman Catt (2); Amanda Mathews Chase (3); Clara Bewick Colby (11); Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (5); Frederick Douglass (1); Will Allen Dromgoole (6); Georgia Ransom Fay Ferguson (31); Jessie Benton Frémont (35); Lily Frémont (10); Friday Morning Club (6); Lucretia Rudolph Garfield (14); Francis Jackson Garrison (16); William Lloyd Garrison (5); Charlotte Perkins Gilman (9); Kate M. Gordon (6); Margaret Collier Graham (11); Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (16); Phoebe Apperson Hearst (5); William Randolph Hearst (1); Isabella Beecher Hooker (1); Timothy Hopkins (7); Julia Ward Howe (3); Intercollegiate Socialist Society (2); Carrie Jacobs-Bond (6); Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1); Jack London (2); Charles Fletcher Lummis (35); Alice Moore McComas (6); Mila Tupper Maynard (5); Elizabeth Smith Miller (3); Harriet Mann Miller (16); Maria Mitchell (2); Helena Modjeska (10); Dorothea Moore (6); Eva Perry Moore (3); National American Woman Suffrage Association (2); Nelson O. Nelson (46); New England Women's Club (2); Alice Park (20); Jenny Marsh Parker (9); Mary Elizabeth Phillips (32); Louis Prang (15); Mary Amelia Dana Hicks Prang (15); Ella Giles Ruddy (26); Kate Sanborn (4); Ellen Clark Sargent (7); Caroline M. Seymour Severance (232); James Seymour Severance (3,063); Mark Sibley Severance (557); Pierre Clark Severance (53); Theodoric Cordenio Severance (50); May Wright Sewall (6); Henry W. Seymour (1); Anna Howard Shaw (10); Homer B. Sprague (3); Julia A. Sprague (36); Rebecca Buffum Spring (5); Sarah B. Stearns (16); Lucy Stone (4); Henry Baldwin Ward (2); Lydia Avery Coonley Ward (17); Booker T. Washington (2); Kate Gannett Wells (12); Charles William Wendte (10); Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin (20); Gaylord Wilshire (8); J. Stitt Wilson (13); Woman Suffrage Convention (1); Kate Tannatt Woods (22); and Marie E. Zakrzewska (18).

Ephemera (Boxes 59-84), Oversize Items (Boxes 85-86), and Calling Cards (Boxes 87-107):

The majority of the 9,007 pieces of ephemera are directly related to Caroline Severance's various reform and club interests. It is arranged by type and subject, and consists of address books, appointment books, brochures, business papers, genealogy information for the Clarke, Severance, and Seymour families, greeting cards, invitations, legal documents, miscellaneous lists, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, petitions, club notebooks, photographs, postcards, fliers, programs, reprints, material related to the Harvard Club and the University Club of San Francisco, and financial papers of the Severance family and of the Sidney M. Smith Estate, of which James Seymour Severance was executor. The subjects covered are: kindergarten, Los Angeles, the peace movement, politics and labor unions, reform movements, religion, suffrage, temperance, Unitarianism, women's clubs, and women's rights. The 2,700 calling cards are housed after the Oversize Items; they are in alphabetical order.