Fanny Baker Ames (14 June 1840 – 21 August 1931) was an American philanthropist and women's rights activist.
[2] In the wake of the Panic of 1873 she founded the Germantown Relief Society, an organization that responded to the financial crisis through charity work.
[1] In 1880, Ames founded the Children’s Aid Society and Bureau of Information, an organization that worked for the removal of children from almshouses and their relocation to homes, especially those in the country, which she believed could reduce poverty and juvenile delinquency rates.
Ames became the founder of the Women’s Auxiliary Conference of the Unitarian Church in 1880 and served as Vice President of the organization.
While she was praised for trying to protect white factory women, people raged that she showed no concern for the safety of the “half-savage”, or immigrant, female mill hands, as she referred to them.
[10] She and her husband, along with many other individuals, were known to have spoken at a petitions and hearings for Municipal suffrage for female taxpayers at the State House of the Massachusetts Legislature between 1900 and 1910.
Ames co-founded the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government in 1901 and she was the chairman of the Executive Committee.
[11] Ames died in Barnstable, Massachusetts, 21 August 1931, of a heart ailment and nephritis.