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Mary Hillard Loines (4 May 1844 – 1 April 1944)[1] was a suffragist and civic worker,[2] the daughter of writer Harriet Low.[3]
Mary Hillard Loines | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Mary Hillard 4 May 1844 |
| Died | 1 April 1944 (aged 99) |
| Occupation(s) | Suffragist, civic worker |
| Spouse |
Stephen Loines (m. 1872) |
| Children | Russell Hillard Loines (1874–1922) Hilda Loines (1878-1969) Elma Loines (1882–1983) Sylvia Loines Dalton (1885–1974) |
| Parents |
|
| Relatives | Abiel Abbot Low (uncle) |
Mary Hillard Loines was born on 4 May 1844 in London, England, to American-born parents John Hillard and Harriet Low, who had emigrated to England soon after they married.[3] The family returned to America in 1848, settling in Brooklyn, New York.[3] For a period following the Civil War, Hillard worked as a teacher for the National Freedmen's Relief Association,[4] helping to educate those emancipated from enslavement.[3] She became a strong advocate for the Tuskegee Institute and the Hampton Institute,[3] both of which were created as educational establishments for African-Americans.[5][6]
Hillard subsequently worked as a secretary for G. P. Putnam's Sons publishers before her marriage,[3] in 1872,[1] to insurance broker Stephen Loines, with whom she had four children: Russell Hillard, Hilda, Elma, and Sylvia.[3]
Hillard Loines had been an active suffragist before her marriage, having been elected secretary of the Brooklyn Equal Rights Association in 1869, and continued for over five decades.[3] She became a central figure in the New York State suffrage movement, and in 1899 travelling with state Governor Theodore Roosevelt to a suffrage convention.[3] Along with a group of other activists, she met privately with Roosevelt to discuss the enfranchisement of New York women.[3]
For two decades, between 1899 and 1919, Loines led the Brooklyn Women's Suffrage Association, and became actively involved with the League of Women Voters after women won the franchise.[3] Loines was also prominent in other activism surrounding human rights, including in prison reform, and as a founder and organiser of the Consumers League of New York.[3]
Stephen Loines died in 1919,[7] remembered as a 'leading insurance broker' and 'yachting enthusiast'.[8] Mary Hillard Loines survived him for nearly 15 years, dying in 1944, aged 99, in a nursing home in Florida.[3]
Loines' son, Russell, a lawyer and lover of poetry, assisted in establishing Dongan Hall school on Staten Island.[4] A poetry prize was established in his name at the National Institute of Arts and Letters.[4]
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