Maud Nathan was an American social worker, labor activist and suffragist for women's right to vote.

She came from a prominent New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 family, descended from Gershom Mendes Seixas

Gershom Mendes Seixas

Gershom Mendes Seixas was the first native-born Jewish minister in the United States. He was the minister of Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of New York from 1768 to 1776 and again from 1784 to 1816...

, minister of New York's Congregation Sherith Israel during the American Revolutionary War

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

 . Her sister was the author and education activist Annie Nathan Meyer

Annie Nathan Meyer

Annie Nathan Meyer was an American author and promoter of the higher education of women. Her sister was the activist Maud Nathan and her nephew the author and poet Robert Nathan.-Life and career:...

 and her cousins the poet Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus

Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot novel, Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject. She also began translating the works of Jewish poets into English...

 and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Her nephew was the author and poet Robert Nathan

Robert Nathan

Robert Gruntal Nathan was an American novelist and poet.-Biography:Nathan was born into a prominent New York family. He was educated in the United States and Switzerland and attended Harvard University for several years beginning in 1912. It was there that he began writing short fiction and poetry...

.

External links

• Maud Nathan, by Seymour “Sy” Brody, Jewish Virtual Library
• Maud Nathan Papers.Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.