Susan Fessenden (née, Snowden; December 10, 1840 – September 12, 1932) was an American temperance worker,[1] characterized as a progressive thinker upon all lines of reform.

[1] Her father, Sidney Snowden, was related through his mother to President Theodore Dwight Woolsey of Yale College, President Carroll Cutler of Western Reserve, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, of telegraph fame, to Commodore Samuel Livingston Breese of the United States Navy, and to many other literary and scientific men.

[1] Early in life, Fessenden found that she could most effectively help the causes in which she was interested by the spoken rather than the written word; her literary work was confined to articles on vital subjects and stories for children's magazines.

A parlor organ, chandelier, and stove were donated by Fessenden, and she held herself personally responsible for every service.

During a season of great floods on the Mississippi River, midnight often found her still superintending the lighting and heating of the building and the feeding and putting to bed of the hundreds of homeless who sought temporary shelter.

Her own house was stripped of chairs for women with young children, and she did her utmost, both as an individual and as President of the Y.W.C.A., the organization having assumed the care of these needy people.

[1] Just before leaving Sioux City, Fessenden selected the site and measured the lot on which was to be built a home for the organization which she had for eight years served so faithfully as President: the Samaritan Hospital, carried on by the Y.W.C.A.

[3] At the time of the Hamidian massacres, in 1896, Frances Willard and Lady Henry Somerset sent about 200 refugees to New York City.

By cable, they requested Fessenden among others to receive them at Ellis Island, and to overcome if possible the construction of law that might bar them from admission.

One of these was when, through the invitation from the captain and chaplain, she conducted on the United States battleship Massachusetts a Sunday service which was attended by sailors from three vessels.

Another was the occasion when she presided at the banquet and reception to Lady Henry Somerset at the Boston Music Hall; and a third at Hotel Vendome, the breakfast to Frances E. Willard, at which there were six hundred guests.

Accompanied by two policemen, she spent the entire night in the worst part of Boston, visiting Chinese and Italian quarters, police stations, and so-called hotels.

[3] In 1899, Fessenden had a second great loss in the death of her only son, William, who had graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in the previous year, and had entered upon his first pastorate at New Boston, Mass.

Regarded as one of the most scholarly and statesmanlike speakers that the white ribbon temperance movement produced,[2] in 1913, Fessenden was made a life member of the World's WCTU.