Alice Thacher Post

Alice Thacher Post (June 8, 1853 – February 2, 1947) was an American editor, suffragist, and pacifist. She was a founding officer of the Woman's Peace Party. She was married to Louis F. Post, who was Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Wilson administration.

Alice Thacher Post
A middle-aged white woman wearing a brimmed hat, a white blouse with a high collar, and a dark jacket
Alice Thacher Post, from her 1915 passport application
BornJune 8, 1853
Boston, Massachusetts
DiedFebruary 2, 1947 (aged 93)
Washington, D.C.
Occupation(s)Editor, suffragist, pacifist
SpouseLouis Freeland Post
RelativesNoah Worcester (great-grandfather)

Early life

Alice Thacher was born in Boston, the daughter of Thomas Thacher and Catherine Worcester Thacher.[1] Her grandfather, Thomas Worcester, was the first Massachusetts clergyman ordained in the Swedenborgian "New Church" tradition.[2] Her great-grandfather was also a noted clergyman and pacifist, Noah Worcester.[3]

Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Jane Addams, and Alice Thacher Post in 1915, from the Library of Congress

Career

Thacher worked as an editor at The New Church Messenger, a Swedenborgian publication based in New Jersey, and The New Earth, before her marriage in 1893. Working with her husband, she was managing editor of The Public, a political weekly based in Chicago and in New York, from 1893 to 1913.[1][4][5] She also wrote and published poetry and articles in other magazines.[6][7]

Post moved to Washington, D.C. when her husband became Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1913. She was a founding member of the Woman's Peace Party, vice-president of the American Proportional Representation League,[8] and a member of the American Anti-Imperialist League,[9] among other suffrage, peace, social justice organizations.[10] She addressed a meeting of the Women's Single Tax League of Washington in 1913, proposing that suffrage laws should consider the rights of children to representation at the ballot.[11] She was an American delegate to the International Congress of Women in 1915 when it was held at the Hague,[12] and in 1919 when it was held in Zürich; she also attended the 1924 meeting of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Washington, D.C.[1]

Personal life and legacy

Alice Thacher married widower Louis F. Post in 1893. He died in 1928, and she died in 1947, at her home in Washington, D.C., at the age of 93.[1] Anna George de Mille wrote a tribute to the Posts, as "Partners in the truest sense, these two great people lived gently and bravely, asked little and gave much. They blazed a trail of spiritual dedication to human betterment for all of us to follow."[13] Her papers are in the Louis F. Post Papers, Library of Congress.[14] Her correspondence is also a significant part of the WILPF records at the University of Colorado.[15]

References
  1. "Mrs. Louis Post, Editor, Author, 93; Service for Widow of Louis F. Post, Once- Secretary of Labor Champion of Causes". The New York Times. 1947-02-06. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  2. "The Reverend Thomas Worcester". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  3. Henry Ware (1844). Memoirs of the Rev. Noah Worcester, D.D. Harvard University. J. Munroe.
  4. Amanda Verdery Young. "Alice Thacher Post". Women In Peace. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  5. Post, Louis Freeland; Post, Alice Thacher; Cooley, Stoughton. The Public. A journal of democracy. Princeton University. New York [etc.] S. Bowmar [etc.]
  6. Post, Alice Thacher (1907-04-18). "The Salt Red Blood of Him". The Independent. 62 (3046): 901 – via Internet Archive.
  7. Post, Alice Thacher (October 9, 1909). "Women as Managing Editors". La Follette's Weekly Magazine. 1 (40): 11.
  8. Proportional Representation League (1896). Proportional Representation Review. University of Michigan. Proportional Representation League. pp. 68 (masthead).
  9. Anti-Imperialist League (Boston, Mass ); New England Anti-Imperialist League (1899). Report of the ... annual meeting [serial]. Duke University Libraries. Boston, The League. p. 47.
  10. "Post, Alice Thacher (1853-1947)". Jane Addams Digital Edition. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  11. "Votes for the Children". Lowell Sun. December 9, 1913. p. 15. Retrieved January 8, 2023 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  12. "Mrs. Post to Speak". San Francisco Call. August 26, 1915. Retrieved January 8, 2023 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  13. de Mille, Anna George (March 1947). "In Memoriam: Alice Thacher Post" (PDF). Henry George News: 5.
  14. "Louis F. Post papers". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
  15. "Records of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom". Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Retrieved 2023-01-08.
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