Trailblazers

In 1914 Mrs. Sherwood Hard was chairman of the Women’s Political Union of the Nyacks. She was also president of Nyack’s Morning Music Club for many years. Her husband, Sherwood M. Hard, had an insurance business in New York City. The Hards lived on Piermont Avenue (River Road) in Grand View. Images and mentions of Mrs. Hard do not include her own first name.
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Lucy Virginia Meriwether Davies graduated from the Medical College of the New York Women’s Infirmary in 1888 and practiced medicine until shortly before her death in 1946. She delivered over 6000 babies and also attended to sick and injured workman among the ice and quarry workers in the Rockland Lake area. She had moved to Rockland County when she married artist Arthur B. Davies and they bought a Congers farm. She had expected to give up the practice of medicine when she married but soon discovered the need in the rural county was great. She learned to drive a car when she was 62 and continued to use it for her rounds until she was 81.
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Alice Waldron Miller, the Salvation Army lass, stands in front of her home in Central Nyack. Mrs. Miller of Central Nyack wore her uniform for all public occasions in Nyack. In 1917, at age 49 and widowed, she volunteered for to serve in France, where she distributed coffee and doughnuts to soldiers going into and returning from battle. At home, she was active in the Central Nyack Congregational Church, the Central Nyack Civic Association, and the Ladies Auxiliary of the Charles R. and Raymond O. Blauvelt Post of the American Legion. View this item on New York Heritage

From the time she graduated from Barnard College in 1904, Caroline Lexow Babcock was committed to woman’s rights. She was a leader in the long campaign to extend voting rights to women, in the National Women’s Party, which fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, and in peace movements. When she died at age 98 in 1980, she was wearing an ERA button.
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The year is 1948. Two members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union hold signs which read, "Sol Walters Locked Out All Workers Refuses to Bargain with Union." The woman on the right is Anna Stein and was Myra Starr's (historian of the Village of South Nyack) grandmother. Anna went to work at Sol Walters, 21 Burd Street in Nyack after World War II. At the time she was a widow. The picture was taken in front of the Sol Walters factory.
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Florence Woosner of Germonds sits at the wheel of an early automobile. She was the aunt of Gloria Storms Brubaker. And that is all we know.
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Natalie Couch, on the left, and Gwendolin Towt did a flamenco dance for the 1899 Kirmess and Spielkartenfest, a festival to raise money for Nyack Hospital. Several copies of the entire program are on the shelves of the Nyack Library Local History Room. Natalie went on to be elected as the first woman president of the Rockland County Bar Association, first woman to be appointed journal clerk of the New York State Assembly, and the first Republican committeewoman elected from her district. She was also the first woman to serve as vice-chairman of the Rockland County Republican Committee.
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