Dennett was born in the town of Eliot in the Massachusetts District of Maine on August 17, 1798,[1] and was the first cousin of John Neal.[2][3] She was educated by Quakers.[4] Dennett married Oliver Dennett in 1822 and moved to Portland, Maine.[2][5] The Dennetts' home at 133 Spring Street[6] was a station on the Underground Railroad.[7] The couple kept a "closed carriage with a fine pair of horses" provided by the antislavery society to help aid escaped slaves reach safety.[8]
Lydia Dennett and abolitionist, Elizabeth Widgery Thomas, intervened in an anti-slavery riot that broke out in 1840s at a Portland Female Anti-Slavery Society meeting.[2] Dennett and Thomas helped lecturer, Stephen S. Foster, to safety during the riot.[2] Dennett also helped Ellen Craft, an escaped slave, and her husband flee to England.[7]
In 1852, Oliver Dennett died.[9] Lydia Dennett continued her work, especially for women's rights.[2] Dennett was on the executive committee of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1869.[2] The following year she served as vice president of the Woman's Suffrage Bazar[sic] in Boston.[10] By 1872, Dennett was selected to serve as vice president of the AWSA's executive committee.[2] That same year, she led the first petition campaign for women's suffrage in Maine,[11] as well as Maine's first petition campaign for indigenous suffrage.[10]
Lydia Dennett died on June 4, 1881, and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland.[2]
Beedy, Helen Coffin (1895). Mothers of Maine(PDF). Portland, Maine: The Thurston Print. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2015-12-31. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
Risk, Shannon M. (2009). 'In Order to Establish Justice': The Nineteenth-Century Woman Suffrage Movements of Maine and New Brunswick (Thesis). University of Maine. CiteSeerX10.1.1.428.3747.
Woo, Ilyon (2023). Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom. Simon & Schuster. ISBN9781501191053.
