Mary Clemmer, (6 May 1831- 18 August 1884), was considered one of the highest paid newspaper-women during the Post Civil War Era in American History. Clemmer spent her childhood between New York and Massachusetts and married Daniel Ames in 1851 at the age of twenty. Throughout her life, Clemmer wrote for several newspapers including Republican, Springfield, Massachusetts; Press, New York; The Independent, New York; and Daily Union, Brooklyn, New York. Clemmer received most of her acclaim due to her work with The Independent where she sustained a column, “A Woman’s Letter From Washington,” from 1866 until the time of her death in 1884. Clemmer also wrote poetry and prose, including several novels titled:
Victoria (1864)
Eirene (1870)
Ten Years in Washington (1871)
Memorials of Alice and Phoebe Cary (1885)
Outlines of Men, Women, and Things (1873)
His Two Wives (1874)
Poems of Life and Nature (1886)
Mary Clemmer divorced from Daniel Ames in 1874 and chose to focus on her career as a writer rather than embracing the traditional Victorian ideals of domesticity for women. In 1883, Clemmer remarried to Edmund Hudson, only a year before her death in 1884.
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