Lucy Biddle Lewis

Lucy Biddle Lewis (September 26, 1861 – January 14, 1941) was an American Quaker suffragist and peace activist, one of the American delegates to the International Congress of Women meeting at The Hague in 1915, and in Zürich in 1919. She was American national chair of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She helped to create the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, which includes the papers of many notable pacificists, including those of Jane Addams.

Lucy Biddle Lewis
An older white woman, wearing eyeglasses and a lace collared dress
Lucy Biddle Lewis, from her 1919 passport application
BornSeptember 26, 1861
Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania
DiedJanuary 14, 1941 (aged 79)
Lansdowne, Pennsylvania
OccupationPacifist leader
Known forChair of the American branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Early life and education

Lucy Biddle was born in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Clement Biddle (1838–1902) and Lydia Cooper Biddle. She was part of the extended Biddle family prominent in Philadelphia, descended from Revolutionary War veteran Clement Biddle and his brother, Owen Biddle.[1][2]

Career

Lewis was active in the peace movement, as chair of the women's committee of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),[3][4] and as American national chair of the WILPF, and held other national offices with the league.[5][6] She also served a term as the international president of the WILPF, from 1922 to 1924.[7][8] She worked closely with fellow Quaker pacifist Hannah Clothier Hull.[6][9]

Lewis was a member of the American delegation to the meetings of the International Congress of Women in The Hague in 1915,[10] and in Zürich in 1919.[1][11] In 1921 she praised the postwar relief efforts of the United States, saying "It is up to America to reconcile these nations. The first thing to be done is to feed the starving people of the small central powers. No people can reason well while dying from lack of food."[12]

Lewis was also on the board of managers at Swarthmore College,[13] and used her many connections in the peace movement to gather enough documents, correspondence, and other materials, including the papers of Jane Addams, to establish the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.[1][14][15]

Although she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), she was included on a blacklist circulated by the DAR in 1928, listing American women who were "pacifists, feminists, internationalists, and socialists."[10] In 1935, she was honored at the twentieth anniversary reunion of the 1915 meeting at The Hague, held in Washington, D.C.[16]

Personal life

Lucy Biddle married John Reece Lewis in 1884. He died in 1898.[14] They had a son, Clement Biddle Lewis and a daughter, Lydia Lewis Rickman; their daughter was also active in the international peace movement. Lucy Biddle Lewis died in 1941, at the age of 79, at her home in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.[17] Her papers are part of the large collection of Biddle family papers at Swarthmore College.[1]

References
  1. "Collection: Biddle family Papers | Archives & Manuscripts". Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  2. Daughters of the American Revolution (1908). Lineage Book of the Charter Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Daughters of the American Revolution. p. 93.
  3. Jones, Rufus Matthew (1920). A Service of Love in War Time: American Friends Relief Work in Europe, 1917-1919. Macmillan. p. 83.
  4. Lloyd, Elizabeth. "Women's Branch" Friends' Intelligencer 65(May 23, 1908): 324.
  5. Plastas, Melinda (2011-08-15). A Band of Noble Women: Racial Politics in the Women's Peace Movement. Syracuse University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-8156-5144-4.
  6. "Women's League to Meet Here Early in May". St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 1936-04-19. p. 29. Retrieved 2023-01-18 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. Amanda Verdery Young (March 2017). "Lucy Biddle Lewis". Women In Peace. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
  8. "Photograph Exhibit: International & U.S. Leaders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (E to L)". Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  9. Johnson, Emily Cooper (2016-11-11). Under Quaker Appointment: The Life of Jane P. Rushmore. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-5128-0324-2.
  10. Foster, Carrie A. (1995-06-01). The Women and the Warriors: The U.S. Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1946. Syracuse University Press. pp. 14, 118. ISBN 978-0-8156-2662-6.
  11. "Lewis, Lucy Biddle (1861-1941)". Jane Addams Digital Edition. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  12. "Calls Germans Ready for Quaker Pacifism". The Philadelphia Inquirer. 1921-01-21. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-01-18 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. Swarthmore College (1915). Catalogue. the College. p. 13.
  14. Abbott, Margery Post; Chijioke, Mary Ellen; Dandelion, Pink (2006). The A to Z of the Friends (Quakers). Scarecrow Press. pp. 154–155. ISBN 978-0-8108-5611-0.
  15. Shenker, Israel (1978-11-07). "Peace Causes Are Enshrined At Swarthmore". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-19.
  16. "Pennsylvania Women will Attend Reunion". The Times-Tribune. 1935-04-22. p. 14. Retrieved 2023-01-18 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "Obituary for Lucy Biddle Lewis". Courier-Post. 1941-01-15. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-01-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  • Yukako Otori, To be a modern instrument of peace: American Quaker pacifism in the first World War (PhD dissertation, University of Tokyo 2009).
  • "Jane Addams and Lucy Biddle Lewis" photographed in 1922 at The Hague; in the Jane Addams Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection
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