Elizabeth Packard

Advocate for Married Women's Rights

Elizabeth Packard was a social reformer whose experiences in a mental hospital began her quest for protective legislation for the insane and improved married women's rights. She wrote numerous books and lobbied legislatures literally from coast to coast, advocating more stringent commitment laws, protections for the rights of asylum patients, and laws to give married women equal rights in matters of child custody, property and earnings.

Marriage and Family
Elizabeth Parsons Ware was born on December 28, 1816 in Ware, Massachusetts. At the insistence of her parents, she married minister Theophilus Packard on May 21, 1839. Like many other women of her era, Elizabeth settled into domestic life as a wife and mother in the decades before the Civil War. The couple had six children and led a fairly peaceful life in Kankakee County, Illinois.

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Mary Ellen Pleasant

Humanitarian and Businesswoman

Pleasant was a civil rights activist and entrepreneur who used her fortune to further the abolitionist movement. She worked on the Underground Railroad in several states, including California during the Gold Rush and won significant civil rights in the courts, earning the name 'Mother of Civil Rights in California.'

Childhood and Early Years
Mary Ellen Pleasant altered and embellished her story in several memoirs to offset the criticisms levied against her toward the end of her life, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. By her own account she was born Mary Ellen Williams on August 19, 1814, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to an African American mother and Louis Alexander Williams, a well educated merchant from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).

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Maria Weston Chapman

Author and One of the First Female Abolitionists

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885) was a writer, editor abolitionist, and right-hand woman of prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. She served as editor of the anti-slavery newspapers, the Non-Resistant and the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Although she shunned public speaking, Chapman organized bazaars and other fund-raising events for the movement, and was described by Lydia Maria Child as "one of the most remarkable women of the age."

Childhood and Early Years
Maria Weston was born on July 24, 1806 in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the eldest of eight children born to Warren and Anne Bates Weston, descendants of the Pilgrims. Maria's birth was followed by those of Caroline in 1808, Anne in 1812, Deborah in 1814, Hervey in 1817, Richard in 1819, Lucia in 1822 and Emma in 1825. The children grew up on the family farm and went to local schools.

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Frances Willard

First Woman College President in the United States

Frances Willard was an author, educator, public speaker, social reformer and suffragist. A pioneer in the temperance movement, Frances Willard is also remembered for her contributions to higher education. From the time she assumed presidency of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1879 until her death, Willard used her powerful position to pursue her broad vision for sweeping social reforms to benefit women, including women's suffrage, women's economic rights, as well as prison, education and labor reform.

Willard captivated the imaginations and mobilized the sentiments of countless women. Her vision progressed to include federal aid to education, free school lunches, unions for workers, the eight-hour work day, work relief for the poor, municipal sanitation and boards of health, national transportation, strong anti-rape laws and protections against child abuse.

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Abigail May Alcott

Social Reformer and Early Social Worker

Abigail "Abby" May Alcott (1800–1877) was an abolitionist, women's rights activist, pioneer social worker and one of the first paid social workers in the state of Massachusetts. Abigail was also the wife of transcendentalist philosopher and educator Bronson Alcott and mother of four daughters, including Civil War novelist Louisa May Alcott, providing the model for "Marmee" in Louisa May's novel, Little Women.

Childhood and Early Years
Abigail May was born October 8, 1800, the youngest child of Dorothy Sewall May and prominent Unitarian layman Joseph May. Abigail was given a largely informal education, though like the rest of her family, she was well-read. As a young adult she studied history, languages and science by her tutor Abigail Allyn in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

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Angelina Grimke

One of the First Social Reformers in the United States

Angelina Grimke was a political activist, abolitionist and supporter of the women's rights movement. Her essay An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836) is the only written appeal made by a Southern woman to other Southern women regarding the abolition of slavery. It was received with great acclaim by abolitionists, but was severely criticized by her former Quaker community, and was publicly burned in South Carolina.

Childhood and Early Years
Angelina Emily Grimke was born on November 26, 1805, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Mary Smith Grimke and John Faucheraud Grimke, a judge, planter, lawyer, politician and owner of a thriving cotton plantation. The Grimkes were distinguished member of Charleston society, and parents of thirteen children, of which Angelina was the youngest.

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Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Writer and Women's Rights Activist

Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893) was a poet, novelist, editor, lecturer and women's rights activist whose career spanned six decades. Today Smith is best known for her feminist writings, including "Woman and Her Needs," a series of essays published in the New York Tribune between 1850 and 1851 that argued for women's equal rights to political and economic opportunities, including the right to vote and access to higher education.

Elizabeth Oakes Prince was born August 12, 1806, near North Yarmouth, Maine, to David and Sophia Blanchard Prince. After her father died at sea in 1808, her family lived with her maternal and paternal grandparents until her mother remarried and moved with her stepfather to Cape Elizabeth near the south coast of Maine, where she spent much time even after the family moved to Portland when she was eight.

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Harriet Tubman

Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Painting by Paul Collins:
Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman was an African American abolitionist, humanitarian and Union spy during the Civil War. After escaping from slavery, she made thirteen missions back to the land of her servitude to rescue scores of slaves, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

She was born Araminta Ross around 1820 the fifth of nine children born to slave parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. As with many slaves in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of her birth was recorded, and historians differ as to the best estimate. Harriet herself reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone says 1820.

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Dorothea Dix

Founder of the First Mental Asylums in the U.S.

Dorothea Dix was one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century. A noted social reformer, she also became the Union's Superintendent of Nurses during the Civil War. The soft-spoken yet autocratic crusader spent more than 20 years working for improved treatment of mentally ill patients and for better prison conditions.

Early Years
Dorothea Lynde Dix, daughter of Mary and Joseph Dix, was born in the tiny village of Hampden, Maine, on April 4, 1802. Her father, an itinerant preacher and publisher of religious tracts, had married against his parents' wishes. He had left their home in Boston to settle in what was then the wilderness of Maine, on land owned by his father, Doctor Elijah Dix.

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Frances Dana Gage

Writer, Abolitionist and Women's Rights Activist

Frances Dana Gage was a leading reformer, feminist and abolitionist. She worked closely with other leaders of the early women's rights movement. She was among the first to champion voting rights for all citizens, without regard to race or gender.

Childhood and Early Years
On October 12, 1808, Frances Dana Barker was born in Union, Ohio. Her parents were among the first settlers in the United States Northwest Territory. A farmer's daughter, Frances was educated at a log cabin in the woods, spun the garments she wore, made cheese and butter, and did outdoor chores.

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Lydia Maria Child

Women's Rights Activist and Author

Lydia Maria Child was a women's rights activist, abolitionist, Indian rights activist, author and journalist. Her journals, fiction and domestic manuals reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. Her writings were inspired by a strong sense of justice and love of freedom.

Born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1802, Lydia Maria Francis was the youngest of six children. Her father was a baker famous for his Medford Crackers. She liked to be called Maria. Though the home atmosphere reflected her father's strict Calvinist beliefs, she was greatly influenced by her very intelligent older brother, Convers.

In 1814, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her favorite sister Mary, her father decided Maria would be better off in Mary's new home in Norridgewock, Maine. She helped with household chores but continued to read, study, and correspond with her brother. She also visited a nearby Penobscot settlement, beginning a lifelong interest in Native Americans.

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Clarina Nichols

Women's Rights Activist and Journalist

Clarina Nichols (1810–1885) was a journalist and newspaper editor who was involved in all three of the major reform movements of the mid-19th century: temperance, abolition and women's rights. Because of her own experiences, Nichols was one of the first to grasp the importance of economic rights for women, of the need for wives to keep their property and wages away from their husbands' control.

Clarina Irene Howard was born January 25, 1810, in West Townshend, Vermont, into a prosperous New England family. She was the oldest of eight children, and received an above average education for her day. Her father was the town's 'overseer of the poor.' Clarina listened to his interviews with poor desperate women who had no legal recourse if their husbands were alcoholics or abusive. These experiences contributed to her lifelong passion for women's rights.

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Ellen Craft

Abolitionist and Fugitive Slave from Georgia

Ellen Craft was a slave from Macon, Georgia who escaped to the North in 1848. Craft, the light-skinned daughter of a mulatto slave and her white master, disguised herself as a white male planter. Her husband William Craft accompanied her, posing as her personal servant. She traveled openly by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day 1848. Her daring escape was widely publicized, and she became one of the most famous fugitive slaves.

Ellen Smith was born in 1826 in Clinton, Georgia, to a biracial slave woman named Maria and her white master, Colonel James Smith. Ellen was so light-skinned that she was often mistaken for a member of her father's family. This infuriated Mrs. Smith so much that she gave Ellen, then 11 years old, to her daughter, the wife of Dr. Robert Collins of Macon, Georgia.

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Anna Dickinson

Abolitionist and Lecturer during the Civil War

Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was an abolitionist, writer, lecturer and advocate for women's rights. A gifted speaker at a very young age, she significantly influenced the distribution of political power in the Union just prior to the Civil War. She helped the Republican Party gain key positions in the hard-fought election campaigns of 1863, and was the first woman to speak before the U.S. Congress.

Childhood
Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Philadelphia on October 28, 1842, the youngest of five children of Quaker parents. Her father was a dedicated abolitionist who died of a heart attack shortly after giving a fiery antislavery speech in 1844. Since Anna was only two years old, she did not remember her father, but the fact that he died fighting slavery must have influenced her greatly.

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Sarah Parker Remond

Sarah Parker Remond was an African American abolitionist, doctor and lecturer for the American Anti-Slaver Society. She delivered speeches throughout the United States on the horrors of slavery. Because of her eloquence, she was chosen to travel to England to gather support for the abolitionist cause in the United States.

Sarah Parker Remond was born in 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, one of eight children. Her mother Nancy was the daughter of a man who fought in the Continental Army. Her father John was a free black who arrived from the Dutch island of Curacao as a boy of ten. The Remonds built a successful catering and hairdressing business in Salem.

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Women's Rights Before the Civil War

The Rights of Women Before the Civil War

In the nineteenth century, American law was based upon English common law and the doctrine of coverture, which stated that a woman's legal rights were incorporated into those of her husband when she married, and she was not recognized as having rights and obligations distinct from those of her husband. One of the few legal advantages of marriage for a woman was that her husband was obligated to support her and be responsible for her debts.

The ownership of a woman's real and personal property passed to her husband the moment she said, "I do." Furthermore, a husband could do anything he wished with his wife's material possessions. He could sell them, give them away or simply destroy them, while a wife was forbidden to convey (sell, give or will) her own property.

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