Spier, Grace Delafield Day

Grace Delafield Day Spier was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899, the fourth child of John and Grace Day. In 1904, the family moved to California. Shortly thereafter, they moved to Chicago where they remained until 1916 when the family returned to New York City. All of these moves were occasioned by John Day's career as a sports writer whose speciality was horseracing.

Upon the family's return to New York, Della, the name by which Spier was known throughout her life, took a secretarial course at Eastman's Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York. After graduation, she worked as a secretary for Nevin Sayre, the secretary and later director of the Fellowship for Reconciliation, a Quaker organization. Eventually, she worked with Margaret Sanger, the early-twentieth-century pioneer of birth control, and became an apostle spreading the gospel of birth control. Her sister, Dorothy Day, an American journalist and reformer, co-founded and edited the Catholic Worker . Birth control was a point of contention between Della and her sister Dorothy, a Roman Catholic crusader; despite their differences, the sisters shared a special closeness that remained constant until Della's death.

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