Millicent Baxter

Millicent Amiel Baxter (8 January 1888 – 3 July 1984) was a New Zealand peace activist and pacifist.

Early life Baxter was the eldest daughter of John Macmillan Brown, one of the founding professors of Canterbury University College, Christchurch, and Helen Connon, the principal of Christchurch Girls' High School and first woman graduate with honours in the British Empire. Baxter and her sister Viola grew up in a large Fendalton mansion with a governess and lessons from her mother.

After her mother died in 1903, Baxter went to live with relatives in Sydney and was educated there at the Presbyterian Ladies' College and at the University of Sydney, graduating with a B.A. in Latin, French and German in 1908.

Adult life In 1909, Baxter and her father travelled to England and Europe together. After his return to New Zealand, she entered Newnham College, Cambridge, to study languages, and then went on to Germany to study German and old French. Baxter was hospitalised for a broken hip in 1983 and died in 1984.

In November 2015, Penny Griffith's biography of Baxter's life was published, "Out of the Shadows: The life of Millicent Baxter".