[2] Caroline attended the Upham Female Seminary in Canandaigua and Miss Almira Bennett's Boarding School in Owasco Lake, New York.

[1] The couple left Cleveland and resettled in Boston, Massachusetts in 1855 and, inspired by the sermons of Theodore Parker, joined the Unitarian Church.

After hearing lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, Severance became increasingly committed to social justice and peace.

[2] Shortly after the Civil War, Severance joined the faculty of the Dio Lewis School in Massachusetts, teaching practical ethics.

[2] Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, Octavius Frothingham, and Julia Ward Howe were all invited to speak at the club's first public meeting.

[2] In its first years, the Club awarded scholarships, provided educational opportunities for women, backed the kindergarten movement, and campaigned for the appointment of police matrons.

With two of their children still in the east, Caroline and T. C. Severance had never lost their love of Boston, although they became passionate advocates for their newly adopted home.

Finally, in 1881, she established a lasting institution, the Friday Morning Club, devoted to cultural and social betterment and civic reform.

Situated in a tree-shaded garden, El Nido was a gathering place for men and women devoted to social change.

In 1906, Ella Giles Ruddy wrote in The Mother of Clubs: “For more than thirty years this hospitable home has been a rendezvous for literary people visiting Los Angeles, for leaders in progressive thought .

As Joan Jensen wrote in Women in the Life of Southern California, "By the time she died in 1914 she was firmly committed to a new radicalism.

Had she lived on through World War 1, perhaps she would have been classed as a 'parlor Bolshevik,' dangerous pacifist, and pro-laborite, and her home watched carefully by members of the many Loyalty Leagues of Los Angeles."