Child, Lydia Maria Francis

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Lydia Maria Francis Child
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Female
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Siblings
    6
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    0
    Family
    David Convers Francis (father), Susannah Rand (mother), Convers Francis (brother), Mary Francis Preston (sister), David Lee Child (husband, 1828)
    Occupation
    Journalist
    Writer or Artist
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Unitarian or Universalist
    Other Affiliations
    Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)
    Women’s Rights
    Other
    Other Affiliation
    Native American Rights

    Lydia Maria Francis Child (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Child continued to demand equal treatment for blacks, and so in 1861 she willingly edited former slave Harriet Jacobs's novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She followed this in 1865 with The Freedmen's Book, a collection of short poems, biographical sketches, and essays created with the hope of inculcating pride in newly freed blacks. Aspirations of the World: A Chain of Opals, the final anthology of her work, was published in 1878, two years before her death in Wayland.

    Although best known for her antislavery writings, Child evinced an interest in all areas of social reform. Throughout her long career she commented on such issues as Indian rights, equal rights for women, educational reform, and religious toleration. She sacrificed a burgeoning national career in the 1830s by remaining true to her own conscience and becoming one of the first Americans to speak out against the institution of slavery.
    Catherine Teets- Parzynski, "Child, Lydia Maria Francis," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00127.html.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Child, Lydia Maria Francis and Carolyn L. Karcher. An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. view record
    Child, Lydia Maria Francis, Angelina Emily Grimké, and Grace Douglas. An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States. 2nd ed. Boston: I. Knapp, 1838. view record
    Child, Lydia Maria Francis, Milton Meltzer, Patricia G. Holland, and Francine Krasno. Lydia Maria Child, Selected Papers, 1817-1880. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982. view record
    Child, Lydia Maria Francis. Aspirations of the World: A Chain of Opals. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1878. view record
    Child, Lydia Maria Francis. The Freedmen's Book. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865. view record
    Child, Lydia Maria Francis. The Rebels; or, Boston before the Revolution. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Co., 1825. view record
    Clifford, Deborah Pickman. Crusader for Freedom: A Life of Lydia Maria Child. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. view record
    Karcher, Carolyn L. The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994. view record
    Meltzer, Milton. Tongue of Flame: The Life of Lydia Maria Child. New York: Crowell, 1965. view record
    Osborne, William S. Lydia Maria Child. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Child, Lydia Maria Francis," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5383.