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 Struggle for Women's Rights Begins

In Colonial America and the first few decades of the new United States, individual women often fought for equal rights for themselves, such as assuming business interests of a husband after his death. During the war for independence women did their part by supporting the Patriots in numerous ways, including organizing boycotts of British goods.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, 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.

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