Lily Gillette Foote was born in 1860 in Guilford, Connecticut and grew up here before she left to study at Newnham College, in Cambridge, England. After her studies she moved to Hartford in 1880 at age 20 and was soon after hired by the Clemens family as a governess. The Clemens daughters, Susy and Clara, were 8 and 6 respectively when Miss Gillette was hired to help with their education. In the 1800s, governesses were often single women of the same social class as their employers – “Miss Foote” was a cousin of neighbor Harriet Beecher Stowe and an uncle had been governor of Connecticut.

She worked for the Clemens family for approximately eleven years, only taking one year off to study overseas once more. Foote went on to serve as a private teacher for several other girls in the neighborhood. According to her obituary in 1932, Foote was “greatly interested in the literary and artistic life of the city. She combined sound judgment with a keen spiritual intuition. She possessed, though a woman of small physical endowment, great courage and an interest in all that concerned the welfare and culture of the city. She was particularly active in the foundation of the Mark Twain Memorial Library.”

There are no known photographs of Lily Foote; our search for one continues.