Lillie Devereux Blake (1833-1913), writer, lecturer, reformer, and one of the pioneers in the cause of woman suffrage, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. The family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, when Lillie was two years old, and she attended Miss Apthorp’s School for Girls and later was tutored in college subjects by Yale professors. In 1855 she married Frank Geoffrey Quay Umsted, a Philadelphia lawyer. A few years later she published her first novel, Southwold. Her husband died in 1859, and she took up her literary work as a means of supporting herself and two children. During the first year of the Civil War, she was Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post. In 1866 she married Grenfill Blake, a New York merchant. Her first active work in behalf of woman suffrage began in 1870. She arranged conventions, addressed committees of both houses of Congress and the legislature of several states, presided at public meetings, and made extensive lecture tours. One of her novels, Fettered For Life, was written during this period (1874) as a protest against the status of women in the community. She was president of the New York State Woman’s Suffrage Association for 11 years, active in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1900 she founded the National Legislative League to obtain for women equality of legal, municipal, and industrial rights through action by the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. She championed measures that established matrons in police stations, women census takers, and women physicians in insane asylums admitting women patients. Her last book, A Dangerous Experiment, was published in 1892. She died December 30, 1913, in Englewood, New Jersey.