Lucia True Ames Mead

Lucia Ames Mead (May 5, 1856 – November 1, 1936) was an American pacifist, feminist, writer, and educator based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Early life

Lucia Jane Ames was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, the daughter of Nathan Plummer Ames (1816-1880) and Elvira Coffin Ames (1819-1861). Her father was a Union Army veteran; her mother died when Lucia was a little girl. Her mother's brother, Charles Carleton Coffin, was a noted journalist who covered the American Civil War. After the war, Nathan Ames moved his family to Chicago; Lucia moved back to New England in 1870, after her stepmother died, to live with her older brother Charles and attend school. (She changed her own middle name from Jane to True.)

Career

Lucia Ames started her working life as a piano teacher in Boston. In 1897 she was a speaker at the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, proclaiming her belief that "We are not first of all Americans, we are, first of all, human beings; we are, first of all, God's children, and we have identical interests with all God's children all over the face of the earth." In 1904 she created an exhibit for the American Peace Society at the St. Louis World's Fair, which was turned into a widely circulated pamphlet, "A Primer of the Peace Movement" (1905). She made an award-winning float called "Law Replaces War" for the Columbus Day parade in Boston in 1913. She worked for the establishment of a "Peace Day" holiday to be marked in schools on May 18, writing curriculum materials and giving conference talks on her ideas.