Lydia Maria
Child died in her Wayland, Massachusetts home at age 78 on October
20, 1880. Chances are you never heard of
her. But she may have been the first American woman to earn her living as a professional writer and became one of
the country’s leading social reform
advocates. If you remember her at
all, it is probably because she penned a classic
holiday song still sung by school children.
Child was born on February 11, 1802 in Medford, Massachusetts. Her
father Convers Francis was a businessman, banker, and a stern orthodox Calvinist.
The youngest of three children, she received a conventional education at a local dame
school and a female academy. She was especially close to her oldest brother, Convers Jr. who encouraged her inquisitive mind and guided her
reading. She was bereft when he left
home to attend Harvard when she was
9.
When her mother died, her father sent her to live with a
recently married older sister in Maine where she was expected to act as
a housekeeper and eventually a nurse for the children. The curious Maria continued reading and when
time allowed explored the area. A visit
to the nearby Penobscot settlement
began a lifelong interest in and respect of Native Americans.
In 1819 young Maria took a teaching position in Gardiner,
Maine. She dabbled in mystic Swedenborgism but wrote her brother
that “I am more in danger of wrecking on the rocks of skepticism than of
standing on the shoals of fanaticism. I am apt to regard a system of religion
as I do any other beautiful theory…”
Maria returned to Massachusetts in 1821 a dutifully took communion and became a member of the First Parish in Medford. But she soon moved in with her brother
Covers, now a Unitarian minister at First Parish in Watertown and
attended his church regularly. He
encouraged her reading and gave her a magazine
article that suggested that New
England history might be fertile ground for an aspiring novelist.
With Convers’ encouragement she dashed off her first novel Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times which
was published in 1824 and is credited with being the one of first historical
novels published in the United
States coming out just months after James
Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers, first of the Leatherstocking series. Like
Cooper’s book, it was also noted for its sympathetic
portrayal of Native Americans. From
that time forward he dedicated herself to writing.
But it was not yet a profession that could support
her. The same year she opened her own
school in Watertown and continued
teach for the next four years. In 1826
she founded Juvenile Miscellany,
the first monthly periodical for
children issued in the country.
In 1826 Maria married Boston
lawyer David Lee Child, an
idealistic reformer who introduced
her to the wide and tumultuous world of the Hub City’s intellectuals, activists,
and especially radical abolitionists.
Maria officially joined a conventional Congregational church but left it and began to attend worship with William Ellery Channing, although she
despaired of his reluctance to fully embrace abolitionism. She was soon a frequent participant in Margaret Fuller’s “conversations”
held at Elizabeth Peabody’s
North Street bookstore. She became
Fuller’s close friend and collaborator.
Despite her loving relationship with her husband, he was
frequently drawn into improvident
schemes or in trouble for his activism.
Twice he was jailed for debt. The family had to
rely largely on Maria’s earnings as a writer.
Inspired by her own experience she published The Frugal Housewife, a guide
to making do with little. It was a success and kept the family fed.
In 1831 Maria became an associate of the nation’s most
notorious abolitionist, William Lloyd
Garrison. She became a leader of the
Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and
contributed to Garrison’s newspaper The Liberator. Although an ardent supporter of women’s rights, she came to
believe that the subjugation of
women could not be ended until the still worse evil of slavery was ended.
From 1832 to ‘35 Child published five volumes of the Ladies Family Library featuring short biographies exemplifying feminine
virtues for her growing audience of middle class women. The books were popular and selling well until
her unvarnished militancy was aired
in her 1833 book An Appeal in Favor
of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Her radicalism alienated much of her
audience. Sales of her books for
women plummeted, as did circulation of her magazine, which she was
forced to suspend in 1834.
Defiant, Child turned her attention full time to the cause
of abolitionism. In 1839 she was elected
to the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The following year she was appointed editor of the Society’s influential
publication, the National Anti-Slavery Standard and moved to New York City to assume her duties.
Her husband David, although nominally named her co-editor, remained in Massachusetts to work on a scheme to introduce sugar beet cultivation to the state to
end dependence on slave harvested sugar cane. Under New York law, Maria was able for the
first time to separate her finances
from those of her husband.
Her tenure at the Standard was a success and circulation grew with her
policy of appealing to the whole family.
She continued her service on the
board of American Anti-Slavery Society where she collaborated with Lucretia Mott and Maria Weston Chapman. She
wrote anti-slavery fiction as a way
of broadening the appeal of the movement including the short stories The
Quadroons in 1842 and Slavery’s Pleasant Homes: A Faithful Sketch
1843.
But in 1842 she broke with Garrison over his advocacy
of refusing to vote as a protest against Union with slave holding states, his advocacy of violence, and organizational
infighting. She felt these positions
would alienate her broadened
readership base. She resigned her
editorship and turned her back for a while on the organized anti-slavery
movement. She vowed to work only with feminist and suffrage organizations.
Child remained in New York as a freelance writer for some time before returning to reunite with her
husband. Together they cared for her
ailing father in Wayland. The old house
became her home for most of the rest of her life.
In the 1850’s escalating tensions over the Fugitive Slave Act and the attack on
her personal friend Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of
the Senate re-invigorated her
opposition to slavery and caused her to re-evaluate
her previous absolute opposition to violence.
Outrages like the murderous raid of pro-slavery forces on Lawrence Kansas caused her to become
more sympathetic to violence. Her poem The Kansas Emigrants drew widespread attention.
She was sympathetic to John Brown after his arrest for trying
to lead a slave insurrection with his
raid at Harpers Ferry. She personally knew some of the prominent Bostonians including Rev. Theodore Parker who
had financed the raid. Child wrote letters of in support of Brown to
Virginia Governor Henry A.
Wise and published the exchange which
was widely praised in the North and condemned in the South.
During the same decade she turned her
attention to religion. She had long been
a seeker and although most frequently worshiped with the Unitarians, she found their practice
sometimes cold and unsatisfying. She plunged into a study of both the evolution of Christianity and of world
religion. She published her three
volume The
Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages in 1854. She
hoped to remove “the superstitious rubbish from the sublime morality of Christ.” The closely researched books were respectful
of the contributions of many religions to the development of a refined human morality. The books were highly praised but sold
poorly. He close friend the Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson said of one
volume that it was “too learned for a popular book and too popular for a
learned one.”
As war clouds
gathered, Child left Wayland for Boston where there was work that needed to be
done in the winter of 1860-61. She was
back home when the war broke out and dedicated herself to charity work supporting contrabands—the
slaves that fell into Union hands or
escaped their masters by fleeing into the protection of the Army. Concerned with their future, she edited
the Freedmen’s
Book, a reading primer for former
slaves.
With the end of the war Child returned to earlier passions.
The plight of Native Americans grabbed her attention and she authored a series
of pamphlets on the issue. Most influential was An Appeal for the Indians in 1868 which called upon government
officials and religious leaders, to bring justice to the tribes, including the
right to retain their lands, speak their languages, and practice their religions. The pamphlet
helped encourage the establishment of the Board
of Indian Commissioners and the subsequent more slightly more lenient peace policy of the Ulysses S. Grant administration.
Child also resumed her work on behalf
of women’s suffrage where she
was a leader of a faction that demanded that free Black men get the vote
first, or in conjunction with women. She
was a founder of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.
In 1867 she was attracted to the Free Religious Association (FRA), a semi-impendent group of Unitarian
ministers and congregations which were challenging the remnants of
orthodoxy. She attended worship at
meetings on her frequent trips to Boston.
In 1878 she published Aspirations
of the World, her own personal
eclectic Bible made up of
quotations culled from the religions of the world.
Child’s husband David died in
1874. Freed of his debts and schemes,
she was for the first time in her life able to save money from her continuing active work as a popular
writer. She used her newfound wealth to
give generously to causes in which she believed.
When Child died in 1880, her
funeral was conducted in her Wayland parlor.
The eulogy was given by her frequent collaborator on abolition, women’s
suffrage, and Indian rights, Wendell
Phillips. She was buried next to her
much loved but improvident husband David.
They left no children.
Oh, did I forget to mention that seasonal song which is now just about
the only thing Child is remembered for?
The words to the Thanksgiving song
Over the River and Through the Woods
were originally published in 1844 as a poem A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day in Volume II
of Child’s collection Flowers for
Children. I could find
no attribution for who set the popular poem to the now familiar tune.
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