Lucia Jane Ames was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, the daughter of Nathan Plummer Ames (1816-1880) and Elvira Coffin Ames (1819-1861). Her father was a Union Army veteran; her mother died when Lucia was a little girl. Her mother's brother, Charles Carleton Coffin, was a noted journalist who covered the American Civil War. After the war, Nathan Ames moved his family to Chicago; Lucia moved back to New England in 1870, after her stepmother died, to live with her older brother Charles and attend school. (She changed her own middle name from Jane to True.)Sandra Opdycke, "Lucia True Ames Mead" in American National Biography Online (2000).
