Lydia Maria Child

By jkmakes

  • LM(F)C born

    Medford, Massachusetts

  • moves to Maine

    (estimate year) to live with sister a year after death of mother. gets to know the Abenaki people

  • 1820 Missouri Compromise

  • "Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times" published

    her first novel

  • marries David Child

  • "The Frugal Housewife" published

    her most successful work

  • David jailed for libel

  • meets William Lloyd Garrison

    marks conversion to abolitionism and dedication of her life to its cause

  • Nat Turner's uprising

  • formation of New England Anti-Slavery Society

    in Boston, Ellis Loring and David Child help draft founding documents

  • "An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans" published

  • BFASS founded

    LMC joins by invitation

  • "the mob year"

    notable increase in violence against abolitionists, including Garrison's capture in Boston at a speaking event

  • David leaves for Europe alone

    to learn about producing beet sugar

  • 2nd Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women

     in Philly, in purpose-built hall, burnt to ground, months after murder of Elijah Lovejoy

  • Frederick Douglass escapes to the north

    with support from American Anti-Slavery Society, begins speaking tour; by 1841 is touring with Garrison

  • moves to Northampton w David

    experimental sugar beet farming; encounter w enslaved woman named Rosa while there, reports back to Garrison about people in the town; eventual rupture w her father

  • elected into top of American Anti-Slavery Society

  • became editor of "The Standard"

  • anti-radical BFASS members disbanded the org

  • becomes editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard

    moves to NYC, alone; will spend 9 years here

  • Mass. repeals law against interracial marriage

  • David declares bankruptcy

  • stated separation from David

    no longer going to “follow David’s movements," resolves to keep their finances unentangled as well; asks Ellis Loring to be her legally required Official Man

  • acrimonious resignation as editor of the Standard

    break in friendship with Maria Chapman; brief but resolved tension with Garrison; she (and many other white abolitionists) take long step back from activism life, living in NYC w the Hoppers

  • Compromise of 1850

    basically undoes 1820 Missouri Compormise, strengthened fugitive slave laws w the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; approved California's request to enter Union as free state; banned slave trade in D.C. (still allowing slavery); made no restrictions on whether any future state from New Mexico or Utah territories would be free or slave

  • H.B.Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin published

  • published biography of Isaac Hopper

    "Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life"; gives all profits to Hopper family

  • moves in again with David and her father

    in Wayland, Mass., to care for her aging ailing father; David's farming had failed again; they needed to economize; will live with David the next 22 years

  • Kansas-Nebraska Act

    decreed KS and NE settlers would vote on slavery's legality

  • published "The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages"

    first such book on religious from the US

  • Child's father dies

    (Year inferred)
    She is devastated by his death. No longer caring for her ailing father frees Child up for other concerns.

  • Dred Scott v. Sandford

    Supreme Court decision that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.

  • Autumnal Leaves published

    available here: https://ia902706.us.archive.org/27/items/autumnalleavesta1857chil/autumnalleavesta1857chil.pdf

  • John Brown's Harpers Ferry Raid in Virginia

  • Lincoln elected

  • 7 states seceded since the election

    South Carolina - December 20, 1860
    Mississippi - January 9, 1861
    Florida - January 10, 1861
    Alabama - January 11, 1861
    Georgia - January 19, 1861
    Louisiana - January 26, 1861
    Texas - February 1, 1861

  • Civil War officially begins

    attack on Fort Sumter by Confederate soldiers

  • Emancipation Proclamation takes effect

    left many in slavery (in the border states and some ‘contraband’ people) and did not provide justice, atonement or reparations

  • Childs' Wayland home burns

  • 'worst race riots in US history' in NYC

    10,000 people march in Manhattan, eventually attacking Black-owned businesses, Black & abolitionist homes, a Black orphanage, and murdering >100 Black Americans over 3 days

  • publishes Looking toward Sunset

    on aging
    read here: https://archive.org/details/lookingtoward00chiliala

  • War over, Lincoln dead

  • publishes The Freedman's Book

    primer for freed people learning to read. "Bracingly progressive" as L. Moland puts it, compared to similar publications, though her own contributions to the book perhaps flawed

  • 13th Amendment proclaimed

    passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

  • publishes novel, A Romance of the Republic

  • David dies

    at home in LMC's arms

  • publishes another work on religion, Aspirations of the World: A Chain of Opals

  • dies of apparent heart attack