Caroline Maria Seymour Severance (1820–1914) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, and founder of women's clubs. Early life and education Caroline Maria Seymour was born on January 12, 1820, in Canandaigua, New York, the daughter of a banker, Orson Seymour, and his wife Caroline M. Clarke. Caroline's father died in 1824, and the family relocated to Auburn, New York. A strict Presbyterian uncle had an outsized influence over Caroline. Caroline attended the Upham Female Seminary in Canandaigua and Miss Almira Bennett's Boarding School in Owasco Lake, New York. She graduated as valedictorian from Miss Ricord's Female Seminary in Geneva at age fifteen in 1835 and served on the faculty of Auburn Female Seminary. For a short time she taught at Mrs. Luther Halsey's boarding school for girls on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh. Marriage to T.C. In 1840, Caroline married Theodoric C. Severance, (nicknamed T. C.), an abolitionist banker from Cleveland, Ohio. T.C. and Caroline had five children between 1841 and 1849, one of whom died in infancy. The pair initially settled in Cleveland, and their home became a meeting place for those interested in liberal causes. The couple left the Presbyterian Church soon after marrying and formed the Independent Christian Church, whose members were anti-slavery. The couple left Cleveland and resettled in Boston, Massachusetts in 1855 and, inspired by the sermons of Theodore Parker, joined the Unitarian Church. Women's rights and women's clubs After hearing lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, Severance became increasingly committed to social justice and peace. In 1853, after several years of attending and speaking at conventions on behalf of woman's rights, she made her first appearance as a speaker to the general public with a speech to Cleveland's Mercantile Library Association, the first lecture delivered there by a woman. Her subject was "Humanity: A Definition and a Plea", by which she meant that women should be included as part of "humanity." It was a radical idea, but the speech was well received by the audience, and by the Cleveland press. That same year, she presided over the first annual meeting of the Ohio Women's Rights Association. In 1854, Severance was elected, alongside her husband, to offices for the Fourth National Women's Rights Convention in Cleveland, and testified to the Ohio Legislature in favor of women holding their own inherited property and earnings. Severance had many other firsts. She was the first woman member