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Hannah Clark Johnston

Hannah Bailey

5 July 1839—23 October 1923

Born 5 July 1839 in Cornwall-on-Hudson, Orange County, New York.1 Daughter of David Johnston and Letitia Clark.2 Attended boarding school and public schools near her home in Plattekill, Ulster County, New York.3 Taught school, 1858–1867.4 Toured New England asylums, prisons, and Sunday schools with Quaker minister Hannah Fry, 1867.5 Married Moses Bailey, 13 October 1868, in Plattekill; one child.6 Settled in Winthrop, Kennebec County, Maine.7 Active participant in the Society of Friends (Quaker organization).8 Husband died, 1882; wrote a biography of his life, Reminiscences of a Christian Life.9 After her husband’s death, worked as pacifist, temperance leader, and suffragist, acting as superintendent of the department of peace and arbitration for the national Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1887–1916; president of the Maine Woman Suffrage Association, 1891–1897; member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; and treasurer of the National Council of Women of the United States, 1895–1899.10 Met and corresponded with Emmeline B. Wells regarding paying dues and writing pamphlets on peace.11 Died 23 October 1923 in Portland, Cumberland County, Maine.12

Footnotes

  1. 1 Frank L. Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in Edward T. James, ed., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 1:83–84; U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925, microfilm 1513966, volume 918, 1–6 June 1900, 26 May 1900, no. 26555, FamilySearch Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. 

  2. 2 Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in James, Notable American Women, 1:84; “Leading Worker of W. C. T. U. Dies,” Boston Herald, 25 Oct. 1923, 11.

  3. 3 Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in James, Notable American Women, 1:84; “Bailey, Hannah J.,” in The National Cyclopædia of American Biography [. . .], vol. 10 (James T. White, 1900), 421; H. H. J., “Hannah J. Bailey,” in Julia Ward Howe, ed., New England Library of Popular Biographies: This Volume Contains Sketches of Representative Women of New England [. . .] (New England Historical Publishing, 1904), 365.

  4. 4 “Bailey, Mrs. Hannah J.,” in Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Charles Wells Moulton, 1893), 44.

  5. 5 John M. Craig, “Hannah Johnston Bailey: Publicist for Peace,” Quaker History 84, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 5–6; Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in James, Notable American Women, 1:84.

  6. 6 Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in James, Notable American Women, 1:84; “Moses Melvin Bailey,” in Biographical Review: This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches of Leading Citizens of Cumberland County Maine (Biographical Review Publishing, 1896), 500.

  7. 7 1870 U.S. Census, Winthrop, Kennebec Co., ME, p. 7; 1910 U.S. Census, Winthrop, Kennebec Co., ME, enumeration dist. 132, p. 6B.

  8. 8 “Bailey, Mrs. Hannah J.,” in Willard and Livermore, Woman of the Century, 44; Minutes of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for New England, 1905 (Southworth Brothers, 1905), 44, 48, 64–65, 84, 86–89, 91, 95.

  9. 9 “Moses Melvin Bailey,” in Biographical Review, 500; H. J. Bailey, Reminiscences of a Christian Life (Hoyt, Fogg & Donham, 1884), 341.

  10. 10 Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in James, Notable American Women, 1:84; Shannon M. Risk, “‘In Order to Establish Justice’: The Nineteenth-Century Woman Suffrage Movements of Maine and New Brunswick” (PhD diss., University of Maine, 2009), 93, 149–150, 153; Craig, “Hannah Johnston Bailey,” 7–14; Harriet Taylor Upton, ed., Proceedings of the Forty-First Annual Convention of the Nation-American Woman Suffrage Association, Held at Seattle, Wash., July 1st to 6th 1909 (National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1909), 140.

  11. 11 Emmeline B. Wells, Diary, 4 Mar. 1895; 24 Nov. 1897; 7 Dec. 1897; 29 Oct. 1899; 29 Jan. 1900; 2 Mar. 1900, Diaries of Emmeline B. Wells, Church Historian’s Press, churchhistorianspress.org/emmeline-b-wells.

  12. 12 “Hannah Clark Johnston Bailey,” Lakeview Cemetery, Winthrop, Kennebec Co., ME, Memorial ID 83040479, Find a Grave Index, accessed 4 Jan. 2025, http://findagrave.com; “Leading Worker of W. C. T. U. Dies,” 11; Byrne, “Bailey, Hannah Clark Johnston,” in James, Notable American Women, 1:84.