In the Footsteps of Eliza: Louisa Lee Schuyler’s Lifetime of Advocacy

Louisa (left) at 14 with siblings Georgina and Philip.
"Portrait of Three Children," 1851, artist unknown.
Courtesy of New York Historical Society.

Louisa Lee Schuyler is the older sister of Georgina, discussed in our last blog post. Born in 1837 to Eliza Hamilton Schuyler and George Lee Schuyler, she was the second eldest of their three children. 

Louisa Lee grew up with her siblings and parents in New York City, but often made trips to Irvington, NY where her grandfather, James Alexander Hamilton, lived at his estate of Nevis. Louisa was well-educated, and as a teenager and young woman, she travelled frequently.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Louisa’s altruistic nature was revealed. Her mother helped found the Woman’s Central Association of Relief and Louisa was appointed chairman. The organization made clothes, bandages, and provided nurses with all needed equipment as they went to army hospitals to tend to wounded Union soldiers. It eventually functioned as an auxiliary branch of the US Sanitary Commission. 

Louisa Lee Schuyler circa 1860s, photographer unknown.
Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site collections.

In 1871, Louisa toured the Westchester County poorhouse. The conditions she witnessed there inspired her and some of her friends to found the State Charities Aid Association (SCAA). The members of SCAA began visiting the multitude of poorhouses and almshouses run by New York State and reported on the deplorable conditions they found there. SCAA focused on child welfare, the welfare of the poor in almshouses and poorhouses, and conditions in hospitals, including those that housed people with mental illnesses.

From 1872-1893, SCAA accomplished a variety of important tasks. Louisa outlined what the association did. In her own words, they are as follows:

• A higher standard of care has been introduced into every poor house and almshouse in the state.
• Training-School for Nurses, 1873. [At Bellevue]
• Hospital Book and Newspaper Society, 1874.
• Farming Out the Poor Abolished, 1875.
• Temporary Homes for Children, 1877-85.
• Tramp Act, 1880.
• First Aid to the Injured, 1882.
• Trained Nurses for the Insane, 1885.
• Municipal Lodging Houses, 1886.
• State Care for the Insane Act of 1890. 
• State Care Appropriation Act of 1891.

Read more about each of the above here.

In many ways, Louisa Lee carried out the legacy of her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, who founded the first public orphanage in New York City (now the Graham-Windham Foundation). Louisa was seventeen when Eliza died. Louisa’s special care in removing children from poorhouses and almshouses and placing them in temporary homes until they could be adopted, as well as working to end preventable blindness in children, echoes Eliza’s fifty years of work with her own orphanage.

While Louisa Lee may not have been the young preservationist her sister, Georgina, was, she was an advocate for many important causes. Together, they were the perfect team to help save and preserve Schuyler Mansion. Learn about the results of their work next week! 

Louisa Lee, 1915.
Photographer unknown.

The State Charities Association still exists today and is now named the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy in honor of Louisa Lee, who also received an honorary LLD from Columbia University in 1915.

Read more on Louisa Lee from the SCAA and VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project. Additional reading from the American Journal of Nursing.