Fanny Baker Ames

Fanny Baker Ames (14 June 1840 – 21 August 1931) was a philanthropist and women's rights leader.

Biography

Born Julia Francis Baker in Canandaigua, New York she briefly attended Antioch College. When the American Civil War came, she volunteered in military hospitals.

Ames married her husband, the Unitarian activist Reverend Charles Gordon Ames, on June 25, 1863. Together, they supported the American Woman Suffrage Association. They were also dedicated abolitionists and social reformers. Mrs. Ames worked especially to evoke a new approach to philanthropy in the late nineteenth century. In her speech "The Care of Dependent Children" before feminists at the National Council of Women, she advocated that society deal with poor people as individuals, instead of "helpless masses". When there was conflict between the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association, Mr. and Mrs. Ames quietly withdrew their support from the AWSA.

In the wake of the Panic of 1873 she founded the Germantown Relief Society. By the 1880s, under the aegis of the Children's Aid Society, in which she was one of the first women inspectors, she travelled across Pennsylvania, reforming almshouses. In addition, around this time, Ames served as the first female factory inspector appointed by the state of Massachusetts, where she advocated such reforms as separate washrooms for men and women.

By the 1890s she was a prominent member of the Anti-Imperialist League. In 1899 she was selected to be one of the original members of the board of trustees of Simmons College