Profile of the Day: Maria Weston Chapman

On this day in 1806, abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman was born.

Image: Maria Weston Chapman / Wikimedia Commons

Chapman was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts to Captain Warren Richard Weston and Anne Bates. Although her family was not wealthy, they were well connected. She spent several years of her childhood living in England, where she received a good education thanks to her uncle, Joshua Bates, who was a prosperous London banker. In 1928, she became principal of the Young Ladies’ High School in Boston.

At the age of 24, she married Henry Grafton Chapman, a Boston merchant, and both became campaigners against slavery. In 1932, she founded the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society along with 12 other women. Chapman also served as the editor of the anti-slavery newspapers, the Non-Resistant and the National Anti-Slavery Standard. She later worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. A prominent figure of the abolitionist movement in Boston, Chapman dedicated her life to her work. She was a prolific writer and published many anti-slavery pamphlets, books, poems, and periodicals throughout her life.

Chapman died on July 12, 1885 at the age of 78.

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