Harriet Duncan Hobart

Harriet Duncan Hobart (1825–1898) was an American schoolteacher and women's rights advocate. After teaching in New York City, she moved to Minnesota and became an advocate for temperance and women's suffrage. She was president of the Minnesota Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) for thirteen years and urged the WCTU to work on behalf of women's rights more broadly. Chauncey was born in St. Albans, Vermont, on June 9, 1811. He served as a soldier in the American Indian Wars of 1831–1832. In 1836, Hobart joined the Illinois conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and worked as an itinerant preacher in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He was chaplain of the House in the first Minnesota Territorial Legislature in 1849 and the Minnesota State Legislature in 1877. During the Civil War he was chaplain of the Third Minnesota Regiment. In 1885, he published Recollections of My Life: Fifty Years of Itinerancy in the Northwest. Her tenure as president was the longest in the group's history.

Hobart's 1891 speech before the Minnesota WCTU's Fifteenth Convention argued for women's rights broadly. She and other leaders were widening the scope of their organization. Some critics within the WCTU felt such efforts were a sideshow that weakened the struggle against liquor. But Hobart believed strongly in women's equality. Hobart, like many of her WCTU sisters, believed that getting the vote would empower women and eventually bring about equal rights. This strength would help them in their war on intoxicating beverages.