Lydia Maria Child

(1802-1880)

Lydia Maria Francis Child, one of the 19th century’s most popular American writers, was a prominent and influential advocate for the abolition of slavery, and for Native American and Women’s Rights.

Early Years

Lydia Maria Child was born Lydia Francis in Medford, Massachusetts on February 11, 1802, the youngest of 7 children. Her father, Convers Francis, owned a bakery where he and his wife, Susannah, produced Medford Crackers. Maria attended primary school and had a further year’s education at a local female seminary. After her mother died in 1815, she moved to Norridgewock, Maine to live with her sister Mary. At age 18, she chose to be re-baptized as Lydia Maria, and asked her family and friends to call her Maria, the name she henceforth preferred.

American Literary Sensation

In 1824, 22-year-old Maria published her first book, Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times, a historical novel about an interracial marriage between a white American colonial woman and a Native American man. In 1826, Maria founded Juvenile Miscellany, the first children’s magazine in America, which made her a literary sensation. Maria met and developed deep and lasting friendships with other intellectual women including Margaret Fuller, the Peabody sisters and Maria White Lowell.

In 1828, Maria married David Lee Child, a Boston activist, lawyer, and editor with whom she shared a deep love and progressive political ideals. With David Child given to idealistic schemes that left them in debt, Maria would be the family breadwinner throughout their marriage. In 1829, Maria published the best-selling The Frugal Housewife, the first book of household advice geared towards middle-class and poor women.

Writing for the Abolitionist Cause

In June, 1830, Maria met William Lloyd Garrison spurring her activism in the small but passionate anti-slavery movement, an unpopular cause at the time. In 1833, Maria published An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called African, the first full-scale analysis of race and slavery and which called for immediate abolition of slavery.  Illustrated with images of iron shackles and conditions on slave ships, the book angered the general public who stopped buying her books and forced her children’s magazine to close. Undaunted, Maria continued to use her talent to promote causes she believed in. In 1837, Maria attended the first Female Anti-Slavery Convention as a delegate, along with Susan Paul and Sarah and Angelina Grimke.

Lydia Maria Child in Northampton

In May, 1838, Maria and David Lee Child moved to Northampton, Massachusetts to pursue his project of growing and manufacturing beet sugar as an alternative to slaved-produced cane sugar. They bought land in Broughton’s meadow in what is now Florence and used processing equipment installed in a building on Masonic Street. Maria at times felt lonely and isolated in Northampton, which she found conservative for her taste, perhaps in contrast to the intellectual vibrancy of Boston’s transcendalist and abolitionist circles. She also resented that Northampton was a summer community for some slaveholders who could legally bring their captives to Northampton for up to 9 months, even though slavery was illegal in the state.

Writer, Editor and Advocate in New York City

By 1841, it was clear that the sugar beets could not pay their debts, and Maria took a job in New York City becoming editor of The National Antislavery Standard, the newspaper of the American Antislavery Society. David remained behind and was connected to the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, the utopian reform community in Florence. Although never a member, he shopped at the Community store, and joined NAEI members at rallies in Northampton. It was David who put the name of David Ruggles before the membership committee after Maria, now living at the home of Ruggles’ friend and compatriot Isaac Hopper, made his plight known.   

In 1843, Child left the Standard and revived her literary career as her views were more widely accepted in the northern United States. Her letters, stories and columns were published in many newspapers and periodicals and she wrote books for children and adults. In 1844, Child published the poem “The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day” that became famous as the song “Over the River and Through the Wood“.

Writing Life in Wayland, Massachusetts

In 1856, Maria and David moved to her family farm in Wayland, Massachusetts, where she continued to write prolifically. In 1861, she edited and wrote the introduction to Harriet Jacob’s autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In 1865 she published The Freedmen’s Book, a book of readings designed especially for emancipated slaves and the first of its kind. Maria advocated tirelessly for black suffrage as well as the redistribution of former slave-owner property to former slaves. In addition, Maria wrote in support of women’s suffrage and the rights of Native Americans as well as novels, poems, children’s stories, and a history of religion. Her husband David Childs died in 1874 and on October 20, 1880, Lydia Maria Child passed away in Wayland, Massachusetts.