Abby Hadassah Smith

Abby Hadassah Smith (June 1, 1797 – July 23, 1879) was an early American suffragist who campaigned for property and voting rights from Glastonbury, Connecticut.[1] She was a subject of the book Abby Smith and Her Cows in which her sister Julia Evelina Smith told the story of their tax resistance struggle in the suffrage cause while the two were living at the Kimberly Mansion in Connecticut.[2][3]

Biography

She was born the youngest of five daughters to Zephaniah Hollister Smith and Hannah Hadassah Hickock,[4] a wealthy, liberal family in Glastonbury, Connecticut in 1797. The family’s home on Main Street, Kimberly Mansion, is a designated National Historic Landmark and was a stop on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.[5] She was educated at Emma Willard’s Seminary in Troy, New York and was known to have kept a diary in both French and Latin. Smith’s mother had authored one of the earliest anti-slavery petitions presented to the United States Congress by John Quincy Adams. And the family was in support of her advocacy of education, abolition and women's rights.[4]

In 1869, Smith and her sister, Julia, attended a woman’s suffrage meeting in Hartford, Connecticut.[1] In 1872, the Town of Glastonbury attempted to raise taxes on the Smith sisters and two other widows in town. None of their male neighbors’ property values had risen so the sisters refused to pay the taxes without having been granted a right to vote in town meetings.[5] The sister’s plight was first published in the Springfield, Massachusetts newspaper, The Republican, and soon newspapers across the country began to publish the story. They became quite famous yet still suffered discrimination by their town.[4]

In 1873, she traveled to New York City to attend the first meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Women and protested taxation of disenfranchised women a month later. In January 1874, seven of her cows were seized and sold for taxes. When she protested this seizure of property, she protested and in June 15 acres of pastureland was also seized for delinquent taxes.[1] The sisters took the town to court and ultimately won their case.[5]

Further reading

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Abby Hadassah Smith and Julia Evelina Smith | biography - American suffragists". Retrieved 2015-05-05.
  2. ↑ Encyclopedia of Women in American Politics. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press. 1999. p. 212. ISBN 978-1-57356-131-0.
  3. ↑ "Abby Hadassah Smith and Julia Evelina Smith". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 "The Smith Sisters, Their Cows, and Women’s Rights in Glastonbury | ConnecticutHistory.org". connecticuthistory.org. Retrieved 2015-05-05.
  5. 1 2 3 "The Smiths of Glastonbury | Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame". www.cwhf.org. Retrieved 2015-05-05.
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