Meyer, Lucy (1849–1922)

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Meyer, Lucy (1849–1922)

Prominent Methodist writer, social reformer, physician, and founder of a training school for Methodist women social workers in Chicago. Name variations: Lucy Jane Rider Meyer; Lucy Rider Meyer. Born on September 9, 1849, in New Haven, Vermont; died of Bright's disease and heart problems on March 16, 1922, in Chicago, Illinois; daughter of Richard Dunning Rider (a farmer) and Jane (Child) Rider; attended New Hampton Literary Institute, 1867; degree from Oberlin College, 1872; attended Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1873–75; attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1877–78; Women's Medical College of Chicago, M.D., 1887; married Josiah Shelly Meyer, on May 23, 1885; children: son Shelly Rider.

Moved to Canada (c. 1868); taught freed slaves in North Carolina (c. 1869); became teacher at Oberlin College (early 1870s); returned to Vermont (c. 1875); became principal of Troy Conference Academy (1876); moved to Illinois (1879); became secretary of the Illinois State Sunday School Association (1881); co-founded first deaconess home in United States (1885); founded journal for deaconesses (1886); formed the Methodist Deaconess Association (1908).

Selected writings:

Children's Meetings and How to Conduct Them (1885); Real Fairy Folks: Explorations in the World of Atoms (1887); Deaconesses: Biblical, Early Church, European, American … (1889); Mary North (novel, 1903).

Lucy Rider Meyer was a leading force in Methodist urban social work, and with her husband co-founded a pioneering training ground and residence for deaconesses in the United States in the 1880s. Deaconesses were Protestant lay women who devoted their lives to ministering to the poor, and Meyer, who lived a long life filled with a wide array of careers and scholarship, was one such woman.

Born in Vermont in 1849, Meyer had six siblings from her father's first marriage, as well as two younger brothers; both sides of her family were descended from some of New England's first European settlers. At age 13, she had a born-again experience at a Methodist revival meeting. After graduating in 1867 from the New Hampton Literary Institute in Fairfax, Vermont, she moved to Canada for a time to work as a tutor to a French family. She next taught at a Quaker school for freed slaves in Greensboro, North Carolina, and returned to New England with two young African-American women whom she helped establish themselves there. At Oberlin College, she was both a student and a teacher, and earned a degree in 1872. She also became engaged there to a young man who planned to become a medical missionary, and as a result she began studying medicine as well, enrolling in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1873. In 1875, however, her fiancé died, after which she spent some isolated years in Vermont caring for her aging parents. During this time, she wrote poetry and Bible tales, and began work on a science textbook, Real FairyFolks: Explorations in the World of Atoms, which would be published in 1887.

In 1876, Meyer was hired as principal of Troy Conference Academy in Poultney, Vermont, but left the post the following year to study chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then moved to Illinois when she became a professor of chemistry at a small college in the city of Lebanon, but she grew dissatisfied with teaching and resigned in 1881 to take a job as secretary of the Illinois State Sunday School Association. In 1885, she married a Chicago businessman, Josiah Shelly Meyer, who shared her devoutness and commitment to social service. That year, with four students in rented rooms, they established the Chicago Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions. Their aim was to introduce young women to the knowledge, both religious and practical, that they would need to minister to the growing number of urban poor. With this in mind, Meyer returned to medical school, this time at the Women's Medical College of Chicago, and earned her M.D. in 1887.

That same year, the Meyers formally founded their permanent home for deaconesses in Chicago. Its residents served as social workers in the area, and even wore an ecclesiastical-type garment. The women took no vows, and received no salary except for a small living allowance. All elements were modeled on a school for Lutheran women in Kaiserswerth, Germany, that had been founded in 1836. In 1888, the Meyers' efforts were formally sanctioned by the governing body of the Methodist Church, which set down formal guidelines for deaconesses. For years Meyer edited a publication called the Deaconess Advocate, and wrote a history of the movement published in 1889 titled Deaconesses: Biblical, Early Church, European, American. …

Accordingly, Meyer was the leading figure in the American deaconess movement, but she eventually came into conflict with others in the church who saw the role of the deaconess differently. Contentious battles with other deaconesses, particularly those of the Methodist Woman's Home Missionary Society, marked her later years, and she came to disagree with the way in which the church's view of their mission work had changed. Meyer worked tirelessly to maintain her Chicago school's independence from church authority, forming the separate Methodist Deaconess Association in 1908, but she also encountered problems with her husband over the aim of their school. Josiah Meyer was of a more conservative mind than Lucy; she recognized changes in society and knew that deaconesses must address those changes in their work if they were to remain effective. Meyer came to know social reformer Jane Addams , the founder of Hull House, and invited her to serve as a lecturer at the Chicago Training School; its board, however, vetoed the idea since Addams and Hull House were unaffiliated with any religious denomination.

Meyer wrote numerous Sunday school stories, and a novel of social protest, Mary North, that was published in 1903. For a time she also studied divinity at the University of Chicago. The enrollment in her school declined, however, and she and her husband handed it over to another group in 1917. The Chicago Training School had by then spawned 40 philanthropic institutions in the city and its suburbs, including an orphanage, a senior citizens' home, and the Wesley Memorial Hospital, in which Meyer died in 1922.