Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck was an American editor and social activist. During the years 1864 and 1865 she acted as president of the National Dress Reform Association.
Background
Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck was born on December 20, 1827, in Warwick, New York, United States. She was a descendant in the seventh generation of Thomas Sayer, one of the founders of Southampton, Long Island. She was the daughter of Benjamin Sayer, a well-to-do farmer and distiller, and Rebecca Forshee, his wife, both prominent in the social life of the community. She grew up in an atmosphere of comfort, in a hospitable home - a fearless and selfreliant girl, notable for her skill in the domestic arts, her able horsemanship, and her keen interest in books.
Education
Lydia received her formal education in the Warwick district school, Miss Galatian’s Select School, the Elmira High School, and Central College. A short time later she entered the Hygeia-Therapeutic College in New York City and graduated from it as doctor of medicine.
Career
About 1849 Lydia became deeply interested in the dress-reform movement and in the doctrines of hygienic living proclaimed by the disciples of the water-cure. With characteristic independence she promptly adopted the “Bloomer” costume, and continued to wear it throughout her life, probably the only one of its early advocates who did so. Because of her unconventional dress she was refused admission to a seminary in Florida, New York, where she had hoped to continue her education. This action outraged her sense of justice and sent her into the ranks of the reformers. She began to speak and write on temperance, woman’s suffrage, and dress reform, and in 1853 went as a delegate to the Whole World’s Temperance Convention.
Lydia began her professional career in Washington, District of Columbia, practising there for a year and lecturing frequently in the neighboring cities on the tyranny of fashion. In June 1856 she removed to Middletown, New York, and joined forces there with John W. Hasbrouck, proprietor of the Whig Press, in establishing a fortnightly reform paper called the Sibyl, “a Review of the Tastes, Errors, and Fashions of Society. ” She edited this lively periodical for eight years, vigorously denouncing all health-destroying fashions, advocating wider opportunities for women, and printing detailed accounts of dress-reform conventions. She then married her business partner by a common-law marriage. Fifty years of companionship followed, during which time both husband and wife continued their reforming zeal.
After giving up the Sibyl, Mrs. Hasbrouck assisted in editing her husband’s paper, the Press, until 1868, and continued to work actively for woman's suffrage. In the first New York election that permitted women to vote for and hold school offices (1880), she was chosen a member of the Middletown schoolboard. The following year she and her husband started an independent weekly paper, the Liberal Sentinel, to defend the program of equal rights for women and men. She died at her home, “Sibyl Ridge, ” in her eighty-third year, after arranging the details of her own funeral - an individualist unsubdued by convention, who had labored steadfastly for the causes, which she believed.
Achievements
Lydia Hasbrouck was famous as an advocate for women's dress reform, and the founder and editor of The Sibyl, a periodical devoted to that topic. She also was the first American woman elected to the Board of Education, Middletown, New York.
Views
Hasbrouck also argued in The Sibyl that women should not pay taxes so long as they were treated as inferior citizens, and she herself refused to pay taxes for a number of years.
Personality
Although Lydia met constant criticism for her “immodest” costume and short hair, she was repeatedly described by reporters as ‘‘a pretty Bloomer doctress, ” graceful and self-possessed, with an intellectual face and a fascinating smile. She led an active intellectual life until the year before her death, never needing medical attention and always vigorous in mind.
Connections
On July 27, 1856, wearing a white bloomer costume, Lydia married her business partner by a common-law marriage. One daughter and two sons were born of this marriage.
