Child, Lydia Maria (1802-1880), was an American abolitionist, author, and editor. She became known for her book An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), which condemned slavery.
Lydia M. Francis was born on Feb. 11, 1802, in Medford, Massachusetts. In 1826, she founded Juvenile Miscellany, the nation’s first magazine for children. In 1828, she married David Child, a Boston lawyer and abolitionist. She became involved in abolitionism in 1831, when she met the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
From 1841 to 1843, Child served as editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, the weekly publication of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She wrote a series of letters supporting John Brown, the noted abolitionist, after he led his historic raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Child also edited Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), the recollections of a former slave named Harriet Ann Jacobs.
Child wrote several books on American Indians, one of her earliest interests. She also wrote the famous poem “Boy’s Thanksgiving” (1845), which begins “Over the river and through the woods. …” Child died on Oct. 20, 1880.
