Elizabeth Fisher Read (1872 – December 13, 1943) was an attorney, scholar, and activist working for women's suffrage and world peace.
[5] In the 1910s, Read was a Women's Suffrage activist and represented the ideology of the New Woman, financially independent, politically active, and socially emancipated.
Beginning in about 1923 and continuing until her death twenty years later, she served as director of research for the American Foundation, a group advocating for international cooperation.
[1][11] Nearby, at 171 West 12th Street, lived other lesbian couples involved in the Woman's Suffrage movement and of the close-knit circle of friends of Roosevelt: Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, Molly Dewson and Polly Porter, and Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester.
[1] Read and Lape also owned a country house, Salt Meadow, Westbrook, Connecticut, where Roosevelt was often a guest.
[7] Refuge staff are working on a National Register of Historical Places submission for the former Salt Meadow estate that will recognize the same-sex relationship of Lape and Read.