| Flavia Camp Canfield | |
| Birth Name: | Flavia Camp |
| Birth Date: | January 28, 1844 |
| Birth Place: | Black Earth, Wisconsin |
| Nationality: | American |
| Relatives: | Dorothy Canfield Fisher (daughter) |
Flavia Camp Canfield (January 28, 1844 – August 12, 1930) was an American artist, author, and founder of the Columbus Federation of Women's Clubs.[1]
Flavia Camp was raised in Black Earth, Wisconsin by her mother and step-father, the Congregational pastor Asa A. Allen, with a combined total of fifteen siblings, half-siblings, and step-siblings.[2] She taught in a local school in her late teens,[3] and went to the University of Wisconsin in 1863, the first year it admitted women.[2]
On June 24, 1873 she married James Hulme Canfield[1] with whom she had a son and in 1879 a daughter Dorothy.[4] [5] Although she didn't speak any foreign languages, she made many trips to Europe with her daughter, for example studying art for a year in Paris.
Canfield became interested in the nascent Women's Club Movement, and accordingly while her husband was president of Ohio State University, she began a campaign to organize and federate clubs in the Columbus region.[6] In all she founded 26 such clubs and the Columbus Federation of Women's Clubs.[1] She was the first president (1895–97) of the Ohio State University Women's Club,[7] and was president of the Ohio Federation of Women's Clubs from 1898–1900.[1]
Canfield continued her interest in the arts as president of The Columbus Art Association, in which role she "broadened the policy of the association and enlarged the membership".[6]
Her published novels include The Kidnapped Campers: A Story of Out-of-Doors (1908), The Refugee Family: A Story for Girls (1919), The Big Tent (1921), and Around the World at Eighty (1925).[4]
Being made the subject of satire in "Flavia and Her Artists", a short story by her daughter Dorothy's friend Willa Cather, was probably the cause for the 10-year rift between Dorothy and Cather.[8]