Caroline Elizabeth Merrick

Caroline Elizabeth Merrick (November 24, 1825 – March 29, 1908) was an American writer and temperance worker.

Taking an active part in the charitable and philanthropic movements of New Orleans, she served as president of the Ladies' Sanitary and Benevolent Association, of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and of the Woman's League of Louisiana.

Caroline Elizabeth Thomas was born on Cottage Hall Plantation, East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, on November 24, 1825.

She addressed the State convention in 1879, and assisted to secure an article in the Constitution making all women over 21 years of age eligible to hold office in connection with the public schools.

It required considerable moral courage to side with a movement so cruelly derided in the South, but, supported by her husband, she always worked for the emancipation of women through her writing, defining the legal status of woman in Louisiana.

[1] She was the author of Old Times in Dixie Land: a Southern Matron's Memories, New York: Grafton Press, 1901.