Family Tree Tuesday – Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

Renowned author Louisa May Alcott was born on November 28, 1832 in Pennsylvania. She is best remembered for her novel Little Women, which was loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and Abigail May. Later in her life, she became an advocate of women’s suffrage and the first woman in Concord, Massachusetts to register to vote in a school board election.

Her father was Amos Bronson Alcott, a teacher, abolitionist and one of the leading figures of the Transcendentalist movement. He was close friends with fellow Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In the late 1840s, he co-founded a Utopian agrarian commune named Fruitlands, which was based on Transcendentalist principles. The community proved to be short lived, lasting only seven months.

Louisa’s mother was Abigail May Alcott, an abolitionist, women’s rights advocate and pioneer social worker. Through her mother, Louisa descended from the prominent Quincy and Sewall families of New England. Her second great aunt, Dorothy Quincy was married to John Hancock, one of the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. And interestingly, her third great grandfather was Samuel Sewall, a magistrate during the Salem Witch Trials.

Check out Louisa May Alcott’s family tree and see how you’re related!

Louisa May Alcott's family tree