Biography

Mary Clemmer (mrs. Hudson) Ames

AMES, Mary Clemmer (Mrs. HUDSON), author, born in Utica, New York, in 1839; died in Washington, District of Columbia, 18 August 1884. She was educated at Westfield (Massachusetts.) academy, and when very young began to write for the "Springfield Republican." Afterward she became a correspondent of the New York " Independent," to which, under the title of " A Woman's Letter from Washington," she regularly contributed for many years. Through these letters she was best known in the literary world. At an early age she married the Rev. Daniel Ames, from whom she was afterward divorced. She was intimate with Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose biographies she wrote. She also published monographs on Charles Sumner, Margaret Fuller, George Eliot, Emerson, and Longfellow. She wrote three novels, "Victoria" (New York, 1864), "Eirene" (1870), and "His Two Wives" (1874); "Ten Years in Washington" (1871), "Outlines of Men, Women, and Things" (1873), and a volume of poems (Boston, 1882). With the earnings of her pen she bought a house in Washington, which was a social as well as a literary centre for many years, and in 1883 she married Edmund Hudson, editor and proprietor of the "Army and Navy Register." She was thrown from a carriage in 1878, and received injuries from which she never wholly recovered. Her husband published a complete edition of her works, in four volumes, in Boston in 1885, and a memorial in 1886. She was an earnest and conscientious writer, and exercised a powerful and healthful influence upon public affairs.