Lucinda Hinsdale Stone (pen name, L. H. S.; September 30, 1814 – March 14, 1900) was an early American feminist, educator, traveler, writer, and philanthropist.

Stone was the first woman in the United States to take classes of young women abroad to study,[1] that means to illustrate history and literature.

She believed in self-development for service and was directly responsible for founding fifty woman's literary and study clubs in the Midwestern United States.

When traveling abroad, my exploration and study of cathedrals and most of the remarkable churches in Rome and in various cities of Europe have been made in the early morning.

The trustees of the academy, recognizing her thirst for knowledge, gave her the then unheard of privilege of entering the classes with the young men who were being fitted for college.

[6] Occasionally, the president or some of the professors of Middlebury College, which was south of her town, and Vermont University at Burlington, to the north, came to preach to her class.

James Andrus Blinn Stone, a Baptist minister, settled at that time in Gloucester, Massachusetts, whose acquaintance she had made while in Hinesburg.

[7] Soon after marriage, Mr. Stone was called to fill the professorship of Biblical Literature in Newton Theological Institution during the absence of his friend, Dr. Horatio Balch Hackett, in Europe for about a year and a half.

But the branches being soon cut off for want of state funds to support them, a Baptist institute, the first literary institution founded in Michigan, the teaching in which had been suspended when the branch of the university was located at Kalamazoo, was revived and grew, principally through Dr. Stone's efforts, into Kalamazoo College, for which he obtained a charter from the Michigan State Legislature.

[9][1] Mrs. Stone taught classes throughout Michigan, including Grand Rapids, Jackson, Bay City, Dowagiac, Coldwater, Saginaw, Port Huron, St. Clair, Alpena, Adrian, Monroe, Hillsdale, Lansing, Charlotte, Jackson, Detroit, Eaton Rapids, Flint, Dearborn and Battle Creek.

[11] She had intimate association with anti-slavery leaders, among whom were William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, Parker Pillsbury, and Frederick Douglass.

She was a most earnest colleague of suffrage reformers, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B.

Her abiding sentiment was: "whatsoever things are true, and good, and holy, must be done by men and women working together, without jealousy or prejudice, without distinction of caste or sex.

As a journalist, Mrs. Stone reached hundreds of thousands of readers on articles related to social and moral issues.

Under her care, it grew until the library parlors and hall of her house overflowed, eventually resulting in the construction of the Stone Memorial Building.

[7] Returning from her last journey of foreign travel, and at the age of seventy-six, she was appointed to organize Isabella Clubs in the Fourth Congressional District, so that "features of interest in the forthcoming World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 might be better appreciated by its members".

Each Thursday found her in her own library in Kalamazoo with the earnest women composing the Isabella Club of that place gathered about her and it was here that her nature was most clearly noted.

It was at this juncture that the Twentieth Century Club of Kalamazoo came into existence, with a large charter membership and Mrs. Stone was chosen as perpetual president, which place she filled until her death seven years later, March 14, 1900, at the age of eighty-five.