Born: September 9, 1849, New Haven, Vermont.
Died: March 16, 1922, Chicago, Illinois.
Buried: Oakwoods Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.
Lucy was the daughter of Richard Dunning Rider and Clara Jane Child, and wife of Methodist Episcopal minister Josiah Shelly Meyer.
She taught high school in Brandon, Vermont, and in a school for freedmen at Greensboro, North Carolina. She then became principal of the Troy (Methodist) Conference Academy in Poultney, Vermont, and a chemistry professor at McKendree College, Lebanon, Illinois.
She and her husband opened the Chicago Training School for City, Home and Foreign Missions, where she was principal (1885–1917). This school was one of the progenitors of the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.
In 1886, she founded the Message periodical (later renamed the Deaconess Advocate), editing it until 1914. In 1908, she formed the Methodist Deaconess Association.