Flower, Lucy Louisa Coues

Lucy Flower was the first woman elected to a state office in Illinois. Flower, a Republican, was elected to board of trustees of the University of Illinois in 1894. Flower was a seasoned activist with especial concern for poor and deliquent children in Chicago. In 1891 Flower was appointed to the Chicago Board of Education and served for three years. She was only the second woman to be appointed to the board. Flower came from a reforming family. Her parents were colleagues of abolitionists and peace activists. Her mother was a niece of William Ladd, the first president of the American Peace Society. Samuel Coues, her father became president of the APS in 1841. Flower was educated in New York and worked for the U.S. Patent Office in the 1850s. She moved to the mid west and eventually married James Monroe Flower, a prominent Republican and influential lawyer. Flower became prominent in social welfare concerns in Chicago, helping to found such agencies as the Protective Agency for Women and Children, a legal aid bureau, and the Chicago Women's Club. Like Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop, Flower was especially active in establishing a juvenile court system in Cook County, Illinois, the first of its kind in the world.