Lydia Maria Child

Writer, editor, abolitionist, suffragist

Library of Congress

Quick Facts

Significance:

Writer, editor, abolitionist, suffragist

Place of Birth:

Medford, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

February 11, 1802

Place of Death:

Wayland, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

October 20, 1880

Through the skill of her pen, Lydia Maria Child advocated for the rights of others as a writer and editor. She followed her written words with action by actively participating in the local and national abolitionist and early women's rights movements.

Born on February 11, 1802 to Convers Francis and Susanna Rand, Lydia Francis grew up the youngest of six children in Medford, Massachusetts. Her father had “peculiarly zealous” anti-slavery convictions, which likely influenced Lydia. Following her mother Susanna’s death in 1814, she moved to Maine for a brief time to live with her sister before returning to Massachusetts.¹

In 1824, Lydia Maria Francis published her first book, Hobomok, while living in Watertown, Massachusetts.² The historical fiction novel tells the story of an interracial marriage between a Native American man, Hobomok, and a white woman, Mary Conant, in the 1620s and 30s in New England. The novel, at the time, challenged contemporary understandings of intercultural relations. By 1829, she had written two other books, Juvenile Miscellany, a "pioneer among children’s magazines," and Frugal Housewife, a book of recipes and housekeeping advice.³

Lydia Maria Francis married lawyer David Lee Child on October 3, 1828.⁴ David Lee Child served as one of the first members of the first Anti-Slavery Society in the United States, alongside founder William Lloyd Garrison.⁵ The Childs grew active in the abolitionist movement while living together in Boston.

In 1833, Lydia Maria Child published An Appeal in Favor of that class of Americans Called Africans. The book tells a comparative history of slavery, in the United States and other countries, while advocating against slavery and colonialization. She touched on the political atmosphere of the United States:

Every man who buys a slave promotes this traffic, by raising the value of the article; every man who owns a slave, indirectly countenances it; every man who allows that slavery is a lamentable necessity, contributes his share to support it; and he who votes for admitting a slave-holding State into the Union, fearfully augments the amount of this crime.⁶

With the publication of An Appeal, Child thrust herself into the abolitionist movement. In doing so, she faced swift and all-encompassing criticism from the public, putting her literary career in jeapordy. But within the abolitionist community, she received high praise for taking such a prominent stance against the institution of slavery.

Child grew move involved in anti-slavery work. At the Anti-Slavery Office on Washington Street, she held the first antislavery fair in Boston in 1834.⁷ Child continued to publish anti-slavery annuals, pamphlets, and small books.⁸

While at first weary of belonging to a female-only organization, Child joined the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. She also served as Vice President at the 1838 Convention of Anti-Slavery Women alongside other activists such as Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, and Mary S. Parker.⁹ Child actively participated in petitioning efforts of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. She also advocated for women’s rights, one of the controversial issues that contributed to the dissolution of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.¹⁰

Her contributions to the anti-slavery movement extended beyond Boston. For example, in May of 1841, Lydia Maria Child began editing the New York-based paper, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, a position she held for two years.¹¹ After radical abolitionist John Brown’s arrest at Harper’s Ferry, the American Anti-Slavery Society published letters between Child, Virginia’s Governor Henry Wise, and the imprisoned John Brown to garner support for abolition.¹² In 1860, William Cooper Nell introduced Lydia Maria Child to Harriet Jacobs, the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Child ultimately edited Harriet Jacob’s work and "tirelessly mailed copies, arranged for reviews, and searched out activists to identify local booksellers willing to carry the slave narrative."¹³

In addition to abolitionist causes, Lydia Maria Child supported the early women’s suffrage movement. In 1835, she compiled and edited the fourth volume of the Ladies’ Family Library, The History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations, considered "the first attempt in America to catalogue information on feminism."¹⁴ She also frequently contributed pieces for the suffrage publication the ­­­for the suffrage publication the Woman’s Journal.¹⁵ Suffragist Lucy Stone invited Child to the 1873 New England Women’s Tea Party, but she declined due to the ailing health of her husband. She wrote to Stone, "It is peculiarly appropriate that women should commemorate resistance to 'taxation without representation,' and I hope you will make the most of it."¹⁶

Child also advocated for the rights of Native Americans. Similar to her book An Appeal in Favor of that class of Americans Called Africans, Child wrote An Appeal for the Indians in 1868, with a goal "to undermine Euro-Americans assumed position of moral and racial superiority and bring the two groups into a more harmonious and familial relationship."¹⁷

Lydia Maria Child died in Wayland on October 20, 1880 at 78 years old from disease of the heart.¹⁸ In her will, Child left money to organizations such as the Home for Aged Colored Women, the Hampton Agricultural College, and friends of Suffrage for Women, amongst fellow abolitionists, family, and friends.¹⁹

Despite all her accomplishments and renown as a social reformer, Child viewed her role as an activist quite differently. In a personal letter to Lucy Stone, she once reflected:

Moreover, I will confess what may lower me in your opinion, I am ranked among reformers, but I never liked reforms. Conscience whipped me into the Anti-Slavery battle, but I was out of my element there. And now that the fighting is done, I am glad to forget it all, as I do last years storms. I never want to talk about it.²⁰

Footnotes

1. Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018, Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850 - Ancestry.com ; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Contemporaries, (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1899), 109-110, https://archive.org/details/contemporaries0000thom/mode/2up.
2. At age 19, Lydia Francis changed her name to Lydia Maria Francis during a baptism to Swedenborgianism. See Lydia Moland, Lydia Maria Child, A Radical American Life (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Molly Vaux, “‘But Maria, Did You Really Write This?’: Preface as Cover Story in Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok,” Legacy 17, no. 2 (2000): 127, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25679333.
3. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Contemporaries, (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1899), 109-110, https://archive.org/details/contemporaries0000thom/mode/2up.
4. Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 - Ancestry.com ; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Contemporaries, (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1899), 109-110, https://archive.org/details/contemporaries0000thom/mode/2up.
5. Mary Howitt, Memoir of William Lloyd Garrison, (Kilmarnock: William Muir, 1846), 26, https://archive.org/details/memoirofwilliamlloydgarrisonreprint/page/n5/mode/2up.
6. Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of that class of Americans Called Africans, (Boston: Allen and Ticknor, 1833), 37, https://www.loc.gov/item/11004047/.
7. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, eds, The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, (Cornell University Press, 1994), xvi, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1nhkdd. 
8. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Contemporaries, (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1899), 124, https://archive.org/details/contemporaries0000thom/mode/2up.
9. Liberator, July 19, 1839, 2; Proceedings of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women held in Philadelphia, (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838), https://archive.org/details/proceedingsofant00anti/page/n3/mode/2up; Debra Gold Hansen, “The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Limits of Gender Politics” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, 48. Cornell University Press, 1994. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1nhkdd.9.
10. Debra Gold Hansen, “The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Limits of Gender Politics” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, 45-65. Cornell University Press, 1994. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1nhkdd.9.
11. Liberator, May 18, 1841, 2.
12. Lydia Maria Child, Henry A Wise, Maria Jefferson Carr Randolph Mason, American Anti-Slavery Society, and Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection, Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia, (Boston: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860), Pdf, https://www.loc.gov/item/07016677/.
13. The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), https://archive.org/details/harrietjacobsfam0000jaco/page/246/mode/2up.
14. Lloyd C. Taylor, “Lydia Maria Child: Biographer,” The New England Quarterly 34, no. 2 (1961): 211–27, https://doi.org/10.2307/362527.
15. The Revolution, December 1, 1870, 341; The Woman’s Journal, December 25, 1880, 411.
16. National American Woman Suffrage Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: General Correspondence, -1961; Child, Lydia Maria. - 1961, 1839, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413200223/.
17. Laura L. Mielke, “Sentiment and Space in Lydia Maria Child’s Native American Writings, 1824–1870,” Legacy 21, no. 2 (2004): 172–92, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25679505.
18. Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 - Ancestry.com
19. Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Massachusetts, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991 - Ancestry.com
20. National American Woman Suffrage Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: General Correspondence, -1961; Child, Lydia Maria. - 1961, 1876, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413200223/.