Letter from Abby W. May to Mrs. Wyman, undated

Activist and suffragist Abigail Williams May (known as "Abby") was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1829, the daughter of Samuel and Mary May. Her father was a hardware merchant and woolen manufacturer. She was a first cousin of Abba May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott's mother. May was involved in relief work during the Civil War and then worked for the rights of freedmen, as well as for women's suffrage and health care for women. She was also very interested in dress reform and published a pamphlet on the topic in 1879. In 1873, May and Lucretia Crocker were elected to the Boston School Committee, thus becoming the committee's first women members. After a challenge based upon their sex, they were not permitted to take their seats. The following year the legislature passed an act opening membership to women and May and several other women were elected. She was re-elected to a three-year term in 1875 but did not win re-election in 1878. In 1879 she was appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Education and served until 1888, when ill health caused her to resign. She was a trustee of the Tuskegee Institute (later Tuskegee University) from 1882 to 1888. Other organizations with which she was involved include the Massachusetts Society for the University Education of Women; the Association for the Advancement of Women; the Women's Auxiliary Conference of the American Unitarian Association; the New England's Women's Auxiliary Association of the US Sanitary Commission (secretary and chair of executive committee, 1862-1866); and the New England Women's Club (founder, 1868, and president, 1877-1879). She died in Boston in November 1888.