Sewall served as chairman of the National Woman Suffrage Association's executive committee from 1882 to 1890, and was the organization's first recording secretary.

Mary Eliza's parents migrated from New England to Ohio, where they met and married, then moved to Wisconsin, where Philander, a former teacher, became a farmer.

[3] After teaching in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, from 1863 to 1865, May left the state to pursue studies at Northwestern Female College in Evanston, Illinois.

The couple hosted weekly gatherings of Indianapolis's intellectual community at their home to discuss the major topics of the day.

[4][6][10] May began her teaching career in 1863, when she took a job at Waukesha County, Wisconsin, but left in 1865 to attend college in Evanston, Illinois.

In 1886, a year after Theodore's death, Sewall leased a double brick building at 343 and 345 North Pennsylvania to serve as a school residence for students who lived outside the city.

[16][17] In addition to academic classes, Sewall introduced dress reform and physical education for young women, which was not typical for a time when corsets, bustles, and petticoats were the norm.

She also urged, but did not require, parents to provide students with simple dress that consisted of a "kilt skirt and loose waist with a sash" to allow for more freedom of movement.

[16][18] After 1885, when Sewall became the sole principal of the school, she added innovative programs such as adult education and courses in domestic science (later known as home economics), which included classes in physics, chemistry, and cooking.

In 1907 she donated items from her Indianapolis home to local organizations and left the city to deliver a public lecture at Eliot, Maine, and continued her work in the women's movement.

[27] Formed at a time when most Indianapolis residents opposed a woman's role outside the home, the club encouraged "a liberal interchange of thoughts.

"[26][28] The club's activities also helped train future leaders in civic affairs and in the national effort to secure voting rights for women.

[27][30] The effort led to establishing the Indianapolis Propylaeum, named after the Greek word propylaion, meaning gateway to higher culture.

[27] Sewall is best known for her work in the woman's suffrage movement, especially her ability to organize and unify women's groups through a concept she called the council idea.

The national and international councils she helped organize brought women of diverse backgrounds together to work toward larger interests.

Frustrated with the Indiana legislature's failure to amend the state constitution, Sewall turned her efforts to securing voting rights for women at the national level.

[42][43] In 1887, as chairman of the NWSA's executive committee, Sewall directed the organization's plans to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

[44] Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony supported the idea of an international suffrage association, little was accomplished until Sewall's presentation at the NWSA's meeting in March 1888.

Forty-nine delegates representing fifty-three national women's organizations approved the establishment of a fifteen-member committee that included Clara Barton, Frances Willard, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, and Sewall.

"In the 1890s, Sewall carried her feminist interests even further abroad" to successfully lead efforts to organize national and international confederations of women.

Sewall attended its first organizational meeting in February 1891, and helped to write its bylaws, but she was disappointed when the new organization decided not to join the National Council of Women.

After serving as the first vice-president of the federation, her interest in the group gradually declined, and she turned her efforts toward the National Council of Women and other reform issues.

[27] Disappointed at the amount she had received from Weaver, after Sewall's retirement from the Girls' Classic School in 1907 and her departure from Indianapolis, she depended on income from public lectures on women's rights and world peace.

[51] During the last fifteen years of her life Sewall combined her activities her interests in the women's movement and working for world peace.

[27][52] During the four Peace Congresses held between 1904 and 1911 Sewall was either a speaker or guest of honor, who represented the nearly eight million women of the International Council.

After traveling through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the group concluded their trip and departed for the United States in January 1916.

Although some argued the trip served a useful purpose by bringing together idealists and journalists to help popularize the peace movement, others considered it a failure.

She claimed those who contacted her from the spirit world told her keep quiet, and the few living friends who did know about her communications with the dead thought she had imagined them.

[59] Sewall died on July 22, 1920, of "chronic parenchymatous nephritis" (kidney disease) at St. Vincent's Hospital, Indianapolis, at the age of seventy-six.

[67] In later years the publication of Sewall's book, Neither Dead Nor Sleeping (1920), and her beliefs on spiritualism overshadowed her thirty-year career in education and longtime support of women's rights.