Jessie Belle Hardy Stubbs MacKaye

Biography

She attended Columbia University and was the legislative chair of the Women's Peace Society in New York City. She was noted for "urging all women to remain unmarried or to refuse to bear children until some efficient means should be devised to secure the world against the devastation of war." Jessie Stubbs died by suicide in 1921 by drowning herself in the East River. While grieving her death, husband Benton MacKaye began formulating the idea that became the Appalachian Trail.