serving several years as "Townsman," or Selectman, and several years as Deputy to the General Court. He was a Deacon of the church.
From Goodman Rice the line to Timothy Rice, father of Mary Ashton, was continued through his son Thomas; his grandson Elisha, who married Elizabcth Wheeler, of Concord, Mass.; their son Silas, who married Copia Broughton; and Silas, Jr., who married Abigail Hager, daughter of Benjamin and Abigail (Warren) Hager and a descendant of William Hager and of John Warren, two early settlers ami prominent citizens of Watertown, Mass. Silas Rico, Jr., who lived for some years at Northfield, Mass., was the father of Timothy, whose home after marriage was in Boston.
Born with a love for books, possessed of a "genius that would study," an energy that knew no such word as fail, Mary Ashton Rice was graduated at the Hancock School, Boston, at the age of fourteen years and six months as a medal scholar, then took a four years' course in two years at a seminary for young ladies in Charlestown, Miss Martha Whiting, principal, and subsequently taught* Latin and French there for two years, at the same time continuing her own more advanced studies. Her next experience was of three years as teacher in a planter's family in Southern Virginia. She returned to Boston a confirmed abolitionist and champion of human rights. The three years following saw her at the head of a school of her own for advanced pupils in Duxbury, an experiment, and a successful one, in co-education. Then came a turning-point in her course. She was married in 1845 to the Rev. Daniel Parker Livermore, an earnest, persuasive preacher of the Universalist faith, a man who did not ask or expect her to become anything less than an equal partner in life's faring. As the wife of a settled minister, for the first twelve years of their marrietl life Mrs. Livermore found abundant opportunity for the use of her varied talents. With a keen sense of the needs of the young people of the parish and warm sympathy for their aspirations, she formed circles for reading and study, and continued the literary work which she had begun some time before, contributing stories, sketches, and poems to the Ladies' Repository, the Neic York Tribune, and other publications, frecjuently lending her pen to the temperance cause. Children came to brighten the home life, which was a happy though a busy ami strenuous one, and not exempt from the cares and sorrows of sickmss and bereavement.
In 1S57 Mr. and Mrs. Livermore, with their two daughteis, lemoved to Chicago, where for a number of yeais Mr. Livcimore edited and published a religious paper. Mrs. Livermore, as a co-worker, often duiing his absence on a missionary trip had sole charge of the paper, printing-office, and its concerns. She wrote much for the paper on every topic except theology, and was also a writer for Eastern papers, their well-kept home, in the meantime, being the centre of far-reaching, generous hospitality. Her practical energy made itself felt in philanthropic work, such as the establishment of the Home for Aged Women, the Hospital for Women and Children in Chicago, and the Home of the Friendless.
When the war of the Rebellion came, with its pressing needs — suffering, hunger, and destitution — Mrs. Livermore, having always been at work, was reatly with well-developetl forces, powers keen and alert, for new service. This she rendered as an associate member of the United States Sanitary Commission with her friend, Mrs. Hoge, their headquarters being in Chicago. She organized soldiers' aid societies, planned sanitary fairs, conducted an endless correspomlence, went to the front to distribute supplies, detailed army nurses. These and many similar deeds of mercy were crowded into those years of strife. Pleading for money to meet the wants of sick, wounded, and dying soldiers, Mrs. Livermore revealed a gift of eloquence of whose possession she was ignorant, and became an effective puljlic speaker years before she would admit the fact.
When the war was ended, she returned to her literary and philanthropic activities in Chicago, using her pen as before to advocate the higher education of women and their entrance into the professions and wider industrial fields, and also urging the repeal of unjust laws, which had hindered their progress. Joining the ranks of the woman suffragists, with these ends in view.
