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Maggie Smith was born in 1867 in Ottawa, Ohio, the daughter of a Methodist Episcopal minister. She arrived in Stevensville, Montana, in 1893. She became a teacher when she was fifteen and taught in Ohio. Later, she was principal and county superintendent of schools in Helena. The Epworth League, established in 1889 in Cleveland, Ohio, was formed as a junior league to extend the effectiveness of Methodism; Smith became a member of the Montana League in 1894. The following year, she became the state president, and worked to make the organization more effectively carry its message of Methodism statewide. She was also active in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In 1911, she married Benjamin Tappan Hathaway, a deputy superintendent of the State Department of Public Instruction. He died when they had only been married six months.

That same year, she became interested in politics. She actively lobbied for women's suffrage and served as one of the first two women in the Montana legislature, 1917-1921. Some of her legislation concerned alcohol and tobacco controls in the state. In 1920, the Democratic caucus elected her the minority floor leader, making her the first woman in American history to receive this distinction. She ran unsuccessfully for the office of Representative to the U. S. Congress from Montana in 1922. In 1925, she was appointed secretary of the Bureau of Child Protection in Montana, and served in that post for three years. Here, she worked to advance the welfare of women and children in the state. In 1936, she was appointed director of Child Welfare Services of the Montana Relief Commission. In this post, she traveled to Washington, DC, to lobby for women and children. She left that position in 1937 and became a freelance worker. In 1940 she became Informational Representative of the State Department of Public Welfare, and became secretary of the Montana Temperance Commission in 1941. In 1953, the Montana Conference of Social Welfare honored Hathaway at its annual banquet.