Born in Warwick, New York, on December 20, 1827, Lydia Sayer early demonstrated intelligence and independence. She attended high school and Central College in Elmira, New York. In 1849 she adopted a costume of kneelength skirt over pantaloons, what soon came to be called the ╥bloomer╙ costume, and when she was refused admission to the Seward Seminary in Florida, New York, on grounds of her unconventional dress, her original motives of comfort and convenience gave way to indignation and principle. She continued to wear the costume through life and was perhaps the only one of the bloomer enthusiasts to do so (although she could not entirely conceal her irritation over the costume╒s having been so named by happenstance for someone who had adopted it later than she). In 1853 she was a delegate to the World╒s Temperance Convention in New York City, and a short time later she studied for a brief time at the Hygeio-Therapeutic College, a hydropathic institution. She practiced medicine in Washington, D.C., for a year, during which she also lectured frequently and contributed to newspapers in several cities.
In 1856 Sayer traveled to Middletown, New York, to lecture on dress reform at the invitation of John W. Hasbrouck, publisher of the local Whig Press. He promptly established a feminist and reform newspaper, the Sibyl, of which the first number appeared in July, and she remained in Middletown to edit it. Later in July she and Hasbrouck were married. The Sibyl, calling itself ╥a Review of the Tastes, Errors, and Fashions of Society,╙ was published biweekly until 1861 and monthly thereafter, and its principal concern was dress reform, with medical education for women, a commonsense system of healthy living she called ╥hygeopathy,╙ and woman suffrage also receiving attention. In 1863╨1864 she was president of the National Dress Reform Association. With the waning of general interest in dress reform the Sibyl ceased publication in June 1864. She helped edit her husband╒s Whig Press until it was sold in 1868. They both continued their shared interest in reform. In March 1880, in the first New York State election in which women were permitted to vote and run for school offices, she was elected to the Middletown school board. In 1881 she and her husband published and edited the short-lived Liberal Sentinel. In later years she was active in real estate development. She died in Middletown, New York, on August 24, 1910.
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