Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society Members
Posted on | September 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Members included:
Mrs. D. Gerrish, President
Miss Helen Louisa Thoreau, Vice President & Founding Member
Thoreau’s sister
The Thoreau home was a haven for fugitive slaves.
(1812–1849)
Mrs. Tewksbury, Treasurer
Mrs. Mary Brooks, Secretary & Founding Member
“Perfectly fearless” Mary Merrick Brooks, wife of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks, was the cornerstone of the Concord anti-slavery efforts and she corresponded quite frequently with Wendell Phillips, understanding that his visits played an important role in raising anti-slavery awareness in Concord. The Brooks home was situated at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road, where the Concord Free Public Library is now located. It was moved to 45 Hubbard Street in 1872, prior to the Library’s construction.
Susan Barrett, Founding Member
In October of 1837, not long after a visit from Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the Concord Female Antislavery Society was formed. Its founding members included Mary Brooks, Prudence Ward, Susan Garrison, Cynthia, Sophia and Helen Thoreau, Mary Wilder, Susan Barrett, Maria Prescott, and Lidian Emerson.
Mrs. Ann Bigelow
Wife of blacksmith Francis Bigelow, Ann was a most earnest, devoted, and influential abolitionist from the start and to the end. She welcomed to her house most of the well-known anti-slavery orators and friends, and also many a fugitive slave, including Shadrach Minkins. The Bigelows lived across the street from Mary Brooks, at 19 Sudbury Rd.
“Mr. Nathan Brooks and Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson were always afraid of committal, we women, never,” Ann Bigelow remembered proudly at the end of the century.
Mrs. Lidian Emerson, Founding Member
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife. Lidian was an abolitionist and expressed her feelings by draping a black cloth over the gate and fence posts outside her house on July 4, 1855. She was protesting the continued presence of slavery in the United States.
(1802-1892)
Mrs. Susan Garrison, Founding Member
Wife of John Garrison, a fugitive slave from New Jersey who found freedom in Concord and was a hard working laborer. CFASS members visited Mrs. Garrison to discuss their plans and to eat her “delicious cookies.”
Mrs. Harriet Hanson Robinson
A Lowell mill-girl who had written for the Lowell Offering, Harriet married William Stevens Robinson, an anti-slavery newspaper editor who used the pen-name “Warrington.” Besides helping her husband with his anti-slavery and reform activities, Harriet Robinson became active in the advancement of women’s rights.
(1825-1911)
Mrs. Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, Founding Member
Thoreau’s mother
(1787–1872)
Miss Sophia Thoreau, Founding Member
Thoreau’s youngest sister
(1819–1876)
Mrs. Joseph Ward & her daughter Miss Prudence Ward, Founding Member
They lived with the Thoreaus at 255 Main St.
Ann Whiting
Louisa Whiting
Mrs. Mary Wilder, Founding Member
First President of CFASS, and wife of Trinitarian Reverend John Wilder, who regularly invited abolitionists to speak at his church.
Miss Mary Rice
A little old gentlewoman who lived behind the Old Burying Ground, “quaint in dress and blunt of speech and with the kindest heart that ever beat.” She was a ‘stationmaster’ in the Underground Railroad and went from school to school to collect 350 signatures of Concord schoolchildren on a petition to President Lincoln asking him to abolish slavery.
Mrs. John Brown
Wife of the abolitionist John Brown, who was controversial because of his use of violence. Franklin Sanborn brought the Browns to live in Concord in 1857.
Mrs. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, aka Caroline Downes Brooks Hoar
The daughter of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks, stepdaughter of his wife Mary Merrick Brooks (president of the Concord Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society), a contemporary of Henry David Thoreau and girlhood companion of his sister Sophia. Caroline Brooks assiduously avoided sugar produced by slave labor and that she helped her stepmother make the famous “Brooks Cake” to raise funds for antislavery purposes.
(1820-1892)
Mrs. Abigail May Alcott, “Abby”
Bronson Alcott’s Unitarian wife — abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and pioneer social worker, supported her husband and the Fruitlands community through her labor and resources. She provided the model for “Marmee” in her daughter Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Little Women.
(1800-1877)
Miss Louisa May Alcott
While she is best known for her writings, Louisa May Alcott was also a supporter of reform movements including antislavery, temperance, women’s education, and women’s suffrage (right to vote).
“I became an abolitionist at a very early age, but have never been able to decide whether I was made so by seeing the portrait of George Thompson hidden under a bed in our house during the Garrison riot, and going to comfort the ‘poor man who had been good to the slaves,’ or because I was saved from drowning in the Frog Pond some years later by a colored boy.”
(1832-1888)
Miss Ellen Emerson
The first daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Lidian lived in Concord throughout her life. She did not marry. Her adulthood was devoted to family, community, and religion.
Mrs. Harriet Tubman
Born into slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland as Araminta “Minty” Ross, is perhaps the most famous individual hero of the Underground Railroad. She was toughened by slavery from an early age, suffering from a blow to her head by a slavemaster that caused her to suffer from seizures the rest of her life. Tubman had escaped to Pennsylvania in 1849, but she returned in 1850 to help some of her relatives who were up for auction. Harriet also returned to Maryland in 1851 to bring her husband, John Tubman, to Pennsylvania only to find he had taken another wife and did not to wish to return with her. This incident perhaps toughened Tubman as nothing else; rather than grieve the loss, she instead dedicated herself to helping others escape. She never remarried. John Brown referred to her as “General Tubman.”
(1820-1913)
Mrs. Martha Bartlett
Wife of Dr. Josiah Bartlett of 35 Lowell Rd.
(1857-1905)
Maria Prescott
In October of 1837, not long after a visit from Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the Concord Female Antislavery Society was formed. Its founding members included Mary Brooks, Prudence Ward, Susan Garrison, Cynthia, Sophia and Helen Thoreau, Mary Wilder, Susan Barrett, Maria Prescott, and Lidian Emerson.
Miss Angelina Grimké
Angelina and her sister Sarah, converted Quakers and abolitionists from South Carolina, were the first women in the United States to publicly argue for the abolition of slavery. They made a revolutionary speaking tour in New England, and visited Concord in 1837, after which the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed.
(1805-1879)
Miss Sarah Grimké
Sarah and Angelina Grimké, converted Quakers and abolitionists from South Carolina, were the first women in the United States to publicly argue for the abolition of slavery. They made a revolutionary speaking tour in New England, and visited Concord in 1837, after which the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed.
(1792-1873)