Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck  Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck (December 20, 1827 – August 24, 1910) was an American hydrotherapist, advocate for women's dress reform and the founder and editor of The Sibyl, a periodical devoted to that topic. Elected to the Middletown, New York, Board of Education in 1880, she was one of the first women to hold elected office in New York. Born Lydia Sayer near the hamlet of Bellvale, New York, she was the daughter of Rebecca (Forshee) Sayer and Benjamin Sayer, a farmer and distiller. In 1849, she adopted the then-radical style of clothing known as the bloomer or reform dress — an adaptation of Turkish pantaloons with a knee-length overskirt. When she applied to the Seward Seminary in Florida, she was told that she could not be admitted unless she stopped wearing the reform dress. She refused and had to finish her education elsewhere. She later recounted that this experience "anchored me in the ranks of women's rights advocates", and she resolved to fight for women's "physical, political and educational freedom and equality." She wore the reform dress throughout her life, including at her wedding. She continued her education at Elmira Academy and then studied hydropathy at the Hygeia-Therapeutic College in New York City where she graduated. Because of their interest in alternative paths to health, hydropaths were among the most active champions of dress reform in the United States. Lydia then moved to Washington, D.C. where she practiced hydropathy and became a newspaper correspondent, writing for the "Washington Star" among other periodicals. In 1856, John Whitbeck Hasbrouck (1826–1906), founder and editor of the reformist "Middletown Whig Press" in New York's Hudson Valley, invited her to take part in a lecture tour about dress reform. They married a few months later and settled in Middletown, where they built an unusual octagonal house inspired by the ideas of phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler. Lydia and John had three children, Daisy (who died as a child), Sayer, and Burt. That same year, Hasbrouck founded her own periodical, "The Sibyl", with John as its publisher. Subtitled "A Review of the Tastes, Errors and Fashions of Society", "The Sibyl" advocated for women's dress reform because Hasbrouck believed that women would not be able to compete on equal terms with men as long as they were hampered by the cumbersome and impractical clothing of the day.