Mabeth Hurd Paige

Who was Mabeth Hurd Paige?

Mabeth Hurd Paige was a Minnesota politician, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1923 to 1945.

Mabeth Hurd was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1869, and educated there through high school. After graduation, she went to Nebraska to take care of her grandmother and attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She then attended the Massachusetts Art School in Boston and studied at the Julian Art Academie in Paris, France.

When she returned to the United States in 1891, Hurd moved to Minneapolis and accepted a job teaching art in the Minneapolis public schools. In 1895 she married James Paige, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota. James encouraged Mabeth to obtain a law degree which she did, at the University.

In 1914 Paige was asked to become president of the Women's Christian Association in Minneapolis that ran a boarding and rooming house for women. She was the founder of the Minneapolis chapter of the Urban League and was a board member for 25 years. She raised money for the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House.

In 1922 Paige filed for the office of Representative of the 30th Legislative District of the State of Minnesota. In November she was elected as one Minnesota's first four woman legislators, alongside Hannah Kempfer, Sue Metzger Dickey Hough, and Myrtle Cain. Her district, which covered part of downtown Minneapolis to the North Side up to about Lowry Avenue, returned her to the House in every election year until she retired in 1945.