Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Lily Helen Thompson Dupuy, 1879-1951
By Katherine Pettine, Rosemont College, Rosemont, Penn.
Lily Helen Thompson Dupuy was born on February 12, 1879, in Frankfort, Kansas, to Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Ramsay Thompson. Lily Thompson married her first husband, William Hamilton Van Kleeck, on February 14, 1899, when she was twenty years old. After charging Van Kleeck with abandonment and securing a divorce, Lily married Harry Wilfred Dupuy, on March 20, 1911. Harry's father was the owner of the Pennsylvania Rubber Company, and Harry served as its secretary and treasurer. Lily and Harry lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and had one son, John, born on March 22, 1914. After being married for only nine years, Harry died on July 6, 1920, at the age of thirty-nine. Lily continued to live in Pittsburgh and married her third husband, George W. Steele, on December 3, 1923. They moved to Paris, France, in 1930. Lily died in Germany on August 16, 1951, at the age of seventy-two.
Mrs. Dupuy was involved in the woman suffrage movement through her work as a state auditor for the Women Suffrage Party of Pennsylvania. She was also involved with the Eastend Suffrage Headquarters, Equal Franchise Federation of Pittsburgh, and the National American Women Suffrage Association. On June 7, 1916, she was one of five thousand women who marched two miles through heavy wind and rain to the Chicago Coliseum, where the Republican National Convention was being held.
SOURCES:
Information about Dupuy can be found on Ancestrylibrary.com and in newspapers including the Pittsburgh Daily Post and Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. See also, Ida Husted Harper, ed., "Pennsylvania," chapter XXXVII in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6: 1900-1920 (New York, NY: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922), pp. 550-64. [LINK]