Lillian "Marilla" Ames was born on 1 March 1843 in Dover, Maine, and died on 6 April 1914 in Portland, Maine. She was known primarily as a Temperance activist and was the President of Women’s Christian Temperance Union succeeding Frances Willard. She also campaigned on behalf of women's suffrage, homeless women and children, and discharged prisoners. Among the list of the various causes the WCTU is involved in are also “Woman’s Advancement” (a cause also intersecting with Temperance, according to Stevens), child labor and--indirectly--diet (through the Pure Food bill). In her 1906 Presidential address, she comments on the necessity for animal rights societies and the Temperance movement to cooperate, her argument being that animals suffer at the hand of drunkards. Stevens cautiously defines what she means by “co-operation” among reform movements though, and stresses the independence and uncompromising nature of the WCTU. She was active in the  National Council of Women of the United States, becoming treasurer in 1891.

 

 

Address of the President Lillian M.N. Stevens Before the Thirty-Third Annual Convention of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union: Hartford, Connecticut, October twenty-sixth, Nineteen Hundred and Six. Evanston, Ill.: National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1906.