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. She was a subject of the book Abby Smith and Her Cows in which her sister Julia Evelina Smith told the story of a tax resistance struggle they undertook in the suffrage cause. Family background Born in 1797, Smith was the youngest of five daughters of Hannah Hadassah (Hickock) Smith and Zephaniah Hollister Smith, a Nonconformist clergyman turned farmer. Smith's mother authored one of the earliest anti-slavery petitions, presented to the United States Congress by John Quincy Adams. The family was united in support of her advocacy of education, abolition and women's rights. At Hannah's instigation, the family house on Main Street, Kimberly Mansion, was a stop on the Connecticut Freedom Trail; it is now a designated National Historic Landmark. The Smiths of Glastonbury—namely, Smith, her sisters, and her mother—were inducted wholesale into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.