Rose Fay Thomas

Rose Fay Thomas (September 4, 1852 – April 19, 1929) was an American writer and advocate for animals. She was also founder and first president of the National Federation of Music Clubs. Early life and education Rose Emily Fay was born in St. Albans, Vermont, one of the nine children of Rev. Charles Hopkins Fay and Charlotte Emily Hopkins Fay. She was from a musical and intellectual family: her older sister Amy Fay was a noted pianist; another sister was Melusina Fay Peirce, a feminist writer and wife of scholar Charles Sanders Peirce. Her maternal uncles included journalist John Henry Hopkins Jr., and musician Charles Jerome Hopkins, and her grandfather was John Henry Hopkins, an Episcopal bishop. Career Rose Fay moved to Chicago as a young woman, and lived there with her brother Charles Norman Fay until she married his friend, orchestra conductor Theodore Thomas, in 1890. While her husband was responsible for the musical programs at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, she organized the National Federation of Music Clubs, and served as the organization's first president. After the Chicago World's Fair, the couple bought a farm in New Hampshire, and she took charge of the remodeling of the house and gardens, which she called "Felsengarten". She published a book about the experience, Our Mountain Garden (1904). In Chicago in 1899, Thomas organized The Anti-Cruelty Society, against the abuse of animals; she was the society's first president. She argued with Jane Addams in a 1901 forum about the best way to protect young boys working as messengers in the city.