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's mother, Harriet Low
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]
