Rebecca Naylor Hazard

Rebecca Ann Naylor Hazard (née Rebecca Ann Naylor; November 10, 1826 - March 1, 1912) was a 19th-century American philanthropist, suffragette, reformer, and writer from the U.S. state of Ohio. With a few other women, she formed the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri and an Industrial Home for Girls in St. Louis. She organized a society known as the Freedmen's Aid Society, and served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association.

Rebecca Naylor was born in Woodsfield, Ohio, November 10, 1826, the daughter of Robert F. Naylor (born in Pennsylvania, but lived mostly in Virgini) and Mary Bettis Archbold (of Virginia). Till the age of 14, she studied at Monroe Institute and the Marietta Seminary. The family then removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, and later to Quincy, Illinois. In Quincy, in 1844, while still a teenager, she married William Tweedy Hazard, of Newport, Rhode Island.

The husband was not a college man. His occupation during most of his life was that of a manufacturer (flour mills). Five children were born to the couple. In 1850, the family removed to St. Louis, Missouri. For many years, domestic affairs claimed the attention of Hazard.

In 1854, she united with other women in establishing an Industrial Home for Girls in St. Louis. For five years she was on the board of managers of that institution, which has sheltered thousands of homeless children. At the breaking out of the American Civil War, Hazard, who was an ardent Unionist, engaged in hospital work, including the care of sick and wounded soldiers. She helped to organize the Union Aid Society and served as a member of the executive committee in the great Western Sanitary Fair. Finding that large numbers of African American women and children were by the exigencies of war helplessly stranded in the city, Hazard sought means for their relief. They were in a deplorable condition, and, as the supplies contributed to the soldiers could not be used for them, she organized a society known as the Freedmen's Aid Society, for their special benefit. At the close of the war, that society was merged in an orphan asylum. Closely following that work came the establishment of a home for women, which was maintained under great difficulties for some years, before being abandoned. With Mary Foote Henderson, Hazard co-founded the School of Design for women in the field of decorative art. It later became part of the Woman’s Exchange.

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