Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd

Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd (November 13, 1876 – September 4, 1962) was an American social reformer who founded Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky. She worked as a writer, editor, and educator. She supported women's suffrage and was a freethinker.

Biography

Little is known about Alice Spencer Geddes' early life as per her own design; the author and educator was known to reject any questions on the subject leaving it shrouded in mystery. Alice Spencer Geddes was born in Athol, Massachusetts, on November 13, 1876, to parents William E. Geddes and Ella Mary Bowker Geddes. The family would end up moving to Boston not five years later, where they would stay until Alice Geddes would move to New Hampshire in 1914. She would later study at Radcliffe College dropping out twice; the first in 1896 and the second in 1900. In 1898 Alice would begin working as a journalist for the Cambridge Chronicle, publishing a supplement to the newspaper titled Woman's Column, the first of which would be included in the November 26, 1898 edition. The article would receive such positive response from both readers and the editors alike that the Woman's Column would become a permanent supplemental section in the newspaper titled The Woman's Chronicle, curating content made by women and for women .

In 1903 she purchased the publication The Cambridge Press, partnering with two friends to give the publication a drastic update and aggressively marketing it to provide a "frank and free criticism" of events of local interest. It would be during this time that she would meet Andrew Lloyd, the then advertising manager of The Cambridge Press, and the pair would later marry on February 16, 1914.

Conflicts with the citizens and local leadership in Gilmanton influenced the decision of the Lloyds to move and by the fall of 1915 they had moved to Ivis, Knott County, Kentucky, with the goal of improving social and economic conditions. Their initial work involved provision of health care, educational services, and agricultural improvements to the Appalachian region, funded by donations from East Coast states.

Together with June Buchanan, a native of Syracuse, New York, whose host Ralph Edwards made a direct fund-raising plea on her school's behalf. In 1997, the college's director of marketing and communications at the time, Stephen Reed, told a journalist, "We've still got people on our mailing and donor list who saw the show." A statue of Lloyd was dedicated on October 10, 2009, during a ceremony at the college.

In 2013 Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd was resurrected by the Kentucky Humanities Council's Kentucky Chautauqua program, an educational dramatization centered around Kentuckians who have made valuable contributions.