Lillian M. N. Stevens (1843–1914) was an American temperance worker and social reformer, born at Dover, Maine. She helped launch the Maine chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), served as its president, and was elected president of the National W.C.T.U. after the death of Frances Willard. Stevens also served as Editor-in-chief of the W.C.T.U.'s organ, The Union Signal. Biography Childhood in Maine Lillian, known as "Marilla" in childhood, was the fourth of six children born in Dover, Maine to Nathaniel Ames and Nancy Fowler Parsons Ames. Two of her older siblings died in infancy, leaving one boy and three girls. As a child, "she loved the woods, quiet haunts, a free life and plenty of books." The four siblings "spent many happy hours on the hillside and in the woods where she delighted to be. . . . [S]he came to love the stately pines better than any flower, or shrub, or other tree." Her father was a teacher, and both parents shared early New England ancestry. She studied, first, at the Foxcroft Academy, founded by the state in 1823 "for the promotion of literature, science, morality and piety." Her mother died when Lillian was 14. In January 1859 her father married Frances L. Bragdon, a resident of Cape Elizabeth. Lillian's new home provided easy access to the Westbrook Seminary, which she entered for the spring term two months later. Education and career Lillian Ames was 16 years old when her father died of consumption. At about that time she began to teach school. She was hired at the Spruce Street School outside Portland, and then by the Stroudwater School. Lillian Ames was said to be one of the earliest Maine women to continue teaching during a winter season, customarily restricted to male teachers. After teaching for several years she decided to marry, a status in those days judged incompatible with a woman's teaching. In 1911 she was awarded an honorary degree of A.M. from Bates College. Marriage and family Lillian Ames married Michael Stevens of Portland, Maine, on October 17, 1865, at Meadville, Pennsylvania. Michael Stevens was about 10 years older than Lillian and was a salt and grain wholesaler. He had been raised in a large brick home in Stroudwater, built in 1803 by his father, Tristram Stevens, and would eventually move his own family into his childhood home. Michael and Lillian Stevens gave birth to