Lydia Maria Francis Child (born Lydia Maria Francis) (February 11, 1802 – October 20,
1880), was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Native American rights activist,
novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism.
Her journals, both fiction and domestic manuals, reached wide audiences from the 1820s through
the 1850s.
At times she shocked her audience as she tried to take on issues of both male dominance and
white supremacy in some of her stories.
Despite these challenges, Child may be most remembered for her poem "Over the River and
Through the Wood."
Her grandparents' house, which she wrote about visiting, was restored by Tufts University
in 1976 and stands near the Mystic River on South Street, in Medford, Massachusetts.
== Early life and education == She was born Lydia Maria Francis in Medford,
Massachusetts, on February 11, 1802, to Susannah (née Rand) and Convers Francis.
She went by her middle name, and pronounced it Ma-RYE-a.
Her older brother, Convers Francis, was educated at Harvard College and Seminary, and became
a Unitarian minister.
Child received her education at a local dame school and later at a women's seminary.
Upon the death of her mother, she went to live with her older sister in Maine, where
she studied to be a teacher.
During this time, her brother Convers, by then a Unitarian minister, saw to his younger
sister's education in literary masters such as Homer and Milton.
In her early 20s, Francis lived with her brother and met many of the top writers and thinkers
of the day through him.
She also converted to Unitarianism.Francis chanced to read an article in the North American
Review discussing the field offered to the novelist by early New England history.
Although she had never thought of becoming an author, she immediately wrote the first
chapter of her novel Hobomok.
Encouraged by her brother's commendation, she finished it in six weeks and had it published.
From this time until her death, she wrote continually.Francis taught for one year in
a seminary in Medford, and in 1824 started a private school in Watertown, Massachusetts.
In 1826, she founded the Juvenile Miscellany, the first monthly periodical for children
published in the United States, and supervised its publication for eight years.
After publishing other works voicing her opposition to slavery, much of her audience turned against
her, especially in the South.
The Juvenile Miscellany closed down after book sales and subscriptions dropped.In 1828,
she married David Lee Child and moved to Boston.
== Career ==
=== Early writings ===
Following the success of Hobomok, Child wrote several novels, poetry, and an instruction
manual for mothers, The Mothers Book; but her most successful work was The Frugal Housewife.
Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of Economy.
This book contained mostly recipes, but also contained this advice for young housewives,
"If you are about to furnish a house, do not spend all your money....
Begin humbly."
First published in 1829, the book was expanded and went through 33 printings in 25 years.
Child wrote that her book had been "written for the poor … those who can afford to be
epicures will find the best of information in the Seventy-five Receipts" by Eliza Leslie.Child
changed the title to The American Frugal Housewife in 1832 to end the confusion with the British
author Susannah Carter's The Frugal Housewife first published in 1765, and then printed
in America from 1772.
Child wrote that Carter's book was not suited "to the wants of this country".
To add further confusion, from 1832 to 1834 Child's version was printed in London and
Glasgow.
=== Abolitionism and women's rights movements ===
In 1831, Lydia Child and her husband began to identify themselves with the anti-slavery
cause through the writings and personal influence of William Lloyd Garrison.
Child was a women's rights activist, but did not believe significant progress for women
could be made until after the abolition of slavery.
She believed that white women and slaves were similar in that white men held both groups
in subjugation and treated them as property, instead of individual human beings.
As she worked towards equality for women, Child publicly said that she did not care
for all-female communities.
She believed that women would be able to achieve more by working alongside men.
Child, along with many other female abolitionists, began campaigning for equal female membership
and participation in the American Anti-Slavery Society, provoking a controversy that later
split the movement.
In 1833, she published her book An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called
Africans.
It argued in favor of the immediate emancipation of the slaves without compensation to slaveholders.
She is sometimes said to have been the first white woman to have written a book in support
of this policy.
She "surveyed slavery from a variety of angles—historical, political, economic, legal, and moral" to
show that "emancipation was practicable and that Africans were intellectually equal to
Europeans."
In this book, she wrote that, "the intellectual inferiority of the negroes is a common, though
most absurd apology, for personal prejudice."
The book was the first anti-slavery work printed in America in book form.
She followed it with several smaller works on the same subject.
Her Appeal attracted much attention, and William Ellery Channing, who attributed to it part
of his interest in the slavery question, walked from Boston to Roxbury to thank Child for
the book.
She had to endure social ostracism, but from this time was considered a conspicuous champion
of anti-slavery.
Child, a strong supporter and organizer in anti-slavery societies, helped with fundraising
efforts to finance the first anti-slavery fair, which abolitionists held in Boston in
1834.
It was both an educational and a major fundraising event, and was held annually for decades,
organized under Maria Weston Chapman.
In 1839, Child was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society,
and became editor of the society's National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1840.
While she was editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, Child wrote a weekly column for
the paper called "Letters from New-York," which she later compiled and published in
book form.
Child's management as editor and the popularity of her "Letters from New-York" column both
helped to establish the National Anti-Slavery Standard as one of the most popular abolitionist
newspapers in the US.
She edited the Standard until 1843, when her husband took her place as editor-in-chief.
She acted as his assistant until May 1844.
During their stay in New York, the Childs were close friends of Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker
abolitionist and prison reformer.
After leaving New York, the Childs settled in Wayland, Massachusetts, where they spent
the rest of their lives.
Here, they provided shelter for runaway slaves trying to escape the Fugitive Slave Law.Child
also served as a member of the executive board of the American Anti-Slavery Society during
the 1840s and 1850s, alongside Lucretia Mott and Maria Weston Chapman.
During this period, she also wrote short stories, exploring, through fiction, the complex issues
of slavery.
Examples include "The Quadroons" (1842) and "Slavery's Pleasant Homes: A Faithful Sketch"
(1843).
She wrote anti-slavery fiction to reach people beyond what she could do in tracts.
She also used it to address issues of sexual exploitation, which affected both the enslaved
and the slaveholder family.
In both cases she found women suffered from the power of men.
The more closely Child addressed some of the abuses, the more negative reaction she received
from her readers.
She published an anti-slavery tract, The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act:
An Appeal to the Legislators of Massachusetts, in 1860.Eventually Child left the National
Anti-Slavery Standard, because she refused to promote violence as an acceptable weapon
for battling slavery.
The abolitionists’ inability to work together as a cohesive unit angered Child.
The conflicts and arguments resulted in her feeling a permanent estrangement, and she
left the AASS.
In quotes, Child stated that she believed herself to be "finished with the cause forever."
She did continue to write for many newspapers and periodicals during the 1840s, and she
promoted greater equality for women.
However, because of her negative experience with the AASS, she never worked again in organized
movements or societies for women's rights or suffrage.
In 1844, Child published the poem "The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day" in Flowers
for Children, Volume 2, that became famous as the song "Over the River and Through the
Wood".
In the 1850s, Child responded to the near-fatal beating on the Senate floor of her good friend
Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts, by a South Carolina congressman,
by writing her poem entitled "The Kansas Emigrants".
The outbreak of violence in Kansas between anti- and pro-slavery settlers, prior to voting
on whether the territory should be admitted as a free or slave state, resulted in Child
changing her opinion about the use of violence.
Along with Angelina Grimke, another proponent for peace, she acknowledged the need for the
use of violence to protect anti-slavery emigrants in Kansas.
Child also sympathized with the radical abolitionist John Brown.
While she did not condone his zealous violence, she deeply admired his courage and conviction
in the Raid of Harper's Ferry.
She wrote to Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise offering her services at Brown's sickbed.
In 1861, Child was invited to write a preface to Harriet Ann Jacobs' slave narrative, Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl.
She helped edit the work for publication that year, and supported efforts to gain attention
for book sales, but the work was overwhelmed by the start of the American Civil War.
=== Native American rights work ===
Child published her first novel, the historical romance Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times, anonymously
under the gender-neutral pseudonym "an American".
The plot centers on the interracial marriage between a white woman and a Native American
man, who have a son together.
The heroine later remarries, reintegrating herself and her child into Puritan society.
The issue of miscegenation caused a scandal in the literary community and the book was
not a critical success.During the 1860s, Child wrote pamphlets on Native American rights.
The most prominent, An Appeal for the Indians (1868), called upon government officials,
as well as religious leaders, to bring justice to American Indians.
Her presentation sparked Peter Cooper's interest in Indian issues.
It contributed to the founding of the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners and the subsequent
Peace Policy in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.
=== Freethought beliefs === Born to a strict Calvinist father, Child slept
with a bible under her pillow when she was young.
However, although she joined the Unitarians in 1820, as an adult she was not active in
that, or any other, church.
In 1855 she published the 3-volume “The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive
Ages”, within which she rejected traditional theology, dogma, and doctrines and repudiated
the concept of revelation and creeds as the basis for moral action, arguing instead “It
is impossible to exaggerate the evil work that theology has done in the world” and,
in commenting on the efforts of theologians “ What a blooming paradise would the whole
earth be if the same amount of intellect, labor, and zeal had been expended on science,
agriculture, and the arts!”
== Personal life == Lydia Francis taught school until 1828, when
she married Boston lawyer David Lee Child.
His political activism and involvement in reform introduced her to the social reforms
of Indian rights and Garrisonian abolitionism.
She was a long-time friend of activist Margaret Fuller and frequent participant in Fuller's
"conversations" held at Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's North Street bookstore in Boston.
Child died in Wayland, Massachusetts, aged 78, on October 20, 1880, at her home at 91
Old Sudbury Road.
She was buried at North Cemetery in Wayland.
At her funeral, abolitionist Wendell Phillips shared the opinion of many within the abolition
movement who knew her, "We felt that neither fame, nor gain, nor danger, nor calumny had
any weight with her."
== Legacy == Child's friend, Harriet Winslow Sewall, arranged
Child's letters for publication after her death.
The Liberty ship Lydia M. Child, named after Child, was launched on January 31, 1943, and
saw service during World War II.
Child was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2007.
== Bibliography == Hobomok, a tale of Early Times.
1824 The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution
(1825).
1850 ed., Google books Juvenile Miscellany, a children's periodical
(editor, 1826–1834) The First Settlers of New England.
1828.
The Indian Wife. 1828.
The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of Economy, a book of kitchen,
economy and directions (1829; 33rd edition 1855) 1832
The Mother's Book (1831), an early American instructional book on child rearing, republished
in England and Germany Coronal. 1931., a collection of verses
The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of Economy (1832)
1841 The Ladies' Family Library, a series of biographies
(5 vols., 1832–1835) The Girl's Own Book.
1833.The Girl's Own Book; new ed. by Mrs. R. Valentine.
London: William Tegg, 1863 An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans
Called Africans 1833 The Oasis. 1834.
Philothea. 1836., a romance of Greece set in the days of Pericles
The biography of Madame de Stael. 1836.
The Family Nurse. 1837.
The Liberty Bell.
1842., included stories such as The Quadroons Slavery's Pleasant Homes: A Faithful Sketch.
1843., a short story Letters from New-York, written for the National
Anti-Slavery Standard while Child was the editor (2 vols., 1841–1843)
"A Boy's Thanksgiving Day" 1844 "Hilda Silfverling, A Fantasy" 1845
Flowers for Children (3 vols., 1844–1846) Fact and Fiction. 1846.
Rose Marian and the Flower Fairies. 1850.
The Power of Kindness.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1851.
The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages, an ambitious work, showing great diligence,
but containing much that is inaccurate (3 vols., New York, 1855)
Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life.
1853.
Autumnal Leaves. 1857.
A Few Scenes from a True History.
1858.
Looking Toward Sunset. 1864.
The Freedmen's Book.
1865.
A Romance of the Republic.
1867.
An appeal for the Indians.
1868.
Aspirations of the World.
1878.
A volume of her letters, with an introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell
Phillips, was published after her death (Boston, 1882)
== See also == Edward Strutt Abdy
Over the River…Life of Lydia Maria Child, Abolitionist for Freedom.
(2008).
Documentary, narrated by Diahann Carroll.
== Notes