Lydia Chapin was born on February 2, 1712 in the Massachusetts Colony ruled by the British. As a child she learned the trades that her mother and her grandmother taught her, which included farming, flax weaving, childrearing and education, the making of clothing, and home economics.

In 1731 she married Josiah Taft and became known as Lydia Chapin Taft. She bore eight children between 1732 and 1753: Josiah, Ebenezer who died at 3 months, Caleb who died at 18, Asahel, Joel who died at the age of five, another Joel, who died at one year of age, Bazaleel and Chloe.

Josiah was a prominent landowner, a farmer, a soldier, a local official, and a Massachusetts legislator, and Lydia was a colonial mother and homemaker. The untimely death of her husband opened the door for Lydia's step into American history as a pioneer of women's suffrage.

She earned this right when a very important town meeting was held in 1756 to discuss funding for the French and Indian War. Lydia was given Josiah's proxy to vote because she was the executor of the Taft estate, which was very large and could contribute greatly to the war effort. She voted to appropriate funds to the regiments.

On October 30, 1756 Lydia Chapin Taft voted in an official New England Open Town Meeting, at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, making her the first recorded legal woman voter in America 164 years before women's suffrage became legal in all of the country.

The early town records demonstrate at least two other occasions when Lydia voted in official Uxbridge Town meetings, in 1758 to reduce the highway rates and again in 1765 to change her school district. She died at Uxbridge in 1778, shortly after U.S. independence.

The only other known claimant to the title of America's first legal Woman Voter was Margaret Brent of Maryland Colony, who tried to assert property rights and to vote in 1647. However her petition was denied by the Governor.

It would be many years before another American woman would become the next pioneer in the history of women's suffrage. Over half a century later, another Massachusetts woman, Abby Kelley Foster, who belonged to the Quaker Meeting at Uxbridge, would lead two later famous suffragists, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone into the anti-slavery movement, where they began their careers as agitators for human rights.

Lydia Chapin Taft's historic vote and her role in the history of women's suffrage was recognized by the Massachusetts legislature on April 1, 2004, when they approved An Act Designating State Highway Route 146A in the town of Uxbridge as the Lydia Taft Highway, a fitting honor for first trekker on the road to women's freedom.