Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Lucy Hobart Day, abt 1856-1937
By Sue McNelly, independent historian
Lucy A. Hobart was born in Maine, about 1856 to Noah Hobart and Augusta Ann Hall. In 1860, the family was living in Standish, Cumberland county, Maine. Lucy's father was a Methodist clergyman and her mother an organist. By 1877 Noah Hobart died and soon thereafter Lucy and her mother moved to live with Augusta's sister in Boston, MA. Lucy Hobart married Charles Day, almost 20 years older than her, in Portland, Maine on 18 January 1882. They do not appear to have had any children.
In 1897, Lucy Hobart Day was elected President of the Maine Woman's Suffrage Association at Waterville. Under her leadership, and that of her predecessor, Mrs. Bailey, many suffrage clubs were created in various Maine communities. Day served as the President until 1905. She embraced tactics such as "open houses," collegiate recruitment and suffrage parades. The MWSA under Day's leadership built alliances with top male progressives in the state of Maine and promoted industrial laws which helped to improve working conditions for women and girls.
Day was associated with the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), having attended many of their conventions as a delegate. On 18 February 1902, Lucy Hobart Day appeared, with several other members of the National American Women Suffrage Association, at a hearing before the Select committee on woman suffrage on the joint resolution which proposed an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, extending the right of suffrage to women. There Lucy Hobart Day gave an effective statement, declaring that the hand of women's progress has a life line that, "will not be ended until the women of these United States have had placed in their hands that sacred token of citizenship, the ballot."
Also in 1902, Lucy Hobart Day and her executive staff placed a letter on the desks of every Maine State Legislator demanding to know why women were taxed equally with men but were still unable to vote.
In 1908, Lucy Hobart Day attended the 40th annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Buffalo, N.Y. She was mentioned in the Syracuse Herald newspaper as giving a report on the committee on church work. She was a well-known speaker at many suffrage conventions and events, delivering "a very pleasing lecture" at the Equal Suffrage meeting in Newtown, PA in November 1908.
Day wrote the chapter on the Maine woman suffrage movement for volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage. She is credited with bringing information about the MWSA to a wider audience.
Sources:
Maine, Pre-1892 Delayed Returns, Maine State Archives, Augusta; Ancestry (http://ancestry.com : accessed 19 September 2017), marriage of Lucy Hobart and Charles Day,18 January 1882.
1860 U.S. census, Cumberland County, Maine, population schedule, Standish, p. 24 (penned), dwelling 190, family 198, Noah Hobart; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 September 2017) from National Archives microfilm M653, roll 437.
1880 U.S. Census, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Boston, enumeration district (ED) 581, p. 127D (penned), dwelling 25, family 34, household of Russell D. Elliott; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 September 2017) from National Archives microfilm T9, roll 552.
Find A Grave, database and images (http://findagrave.com : accessed 19 September 2017), memorial page for Charles Day (died 1908), Find A Grave Memorial no. 117436825, citing Evergreen cemetery, Portland, Cumberland County, Maine.
"History from Our Files: 50 Years Ago Today," Portland Press Herald, 15 September 1949, col. 4; digital image, Ancestry (http://ancestry.com : accessed 19 September 2017).
"Successful Convention," Syracuse Herald (Syracuse, New York), 21 October 1908, col. 5; digital image, Ancestry (http://ancestry.com : accessed 20 September 2017).
"Newtown," Bucks County Gazette (Bristol, PA), 6 November 1908, col. 7; digital image, Ancestry (http://ancestry.com : accessed 20 September 2017).
Susan B. Anthony, Ida Husted Harper, The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, (Indianapolis: The Hollenbeck Press, 1902), Part 92, Chapter XLIII LINK.
Risk, Shannon M., "'In Order To Establish Justice': The Nineteenth-Century Woman Suffrage Movements of Maine and New Brunswick" (2009) Electronic Thesis and Dissertations. 181.
http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/181