Lydia Maria Child

Born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1802, Lydia Maria Francis was the youngest of six children. Her father, David Convers Francis, was a baker famous for his "Medford Crackers." Her mother, Susanna Rand Francis, died when Maria was twelve. (She disliked the name "Lydia" and was usually called "Maria" instead.)

Born into America's new middle class, Lydia Maria Child was educated at home, at a local "dame school" and at a nearby women's "seminary." She went to live for some years with an older married sister.

Maria was especially close to her brother, Convers Francis, a Harvard College graduate, a Unitarian minister and, later in life, a professor at Harvard Divinity School. After a brief teaching career, Maria went to live with this six-year-older brother and his wife at his parish. Inspired, she later said, by a conversation with Convers, she took up the challenge to write a novel depicting early American life, finishing this novel, Hobomok, in only six weeks.

This novel today is valued not for its lasting value as a literary classic, which it is not, but for its attempt to realistically portray early American life and for its then-radical positive portrayal of a Native American hero as a noble Indian in love with a white woman.

The publication of Hobomok in 1824 helped bring Maria Francis into New England and Boston literary circles. She ran a private school in Watertown where her brother served his church. In 1825 she published her second novel, The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution. This historical novel achieved new success for Maria. A speech in this novel which she puts into the mouth of James Otis was assumed to be an authentic historical oration and was included in many 19th century schoolbooks as a standard memorization piece.

She built on her success by founding in 1826 a bimonthly magazine for children, Juvenile Miscellany. She also came to know other women in New England's intellectual community. She studied John Locke's philosophy with Margaret Fuller and she became acquainted with the Peabody sisters and Maria White Lowell.

At this point of literary success, Maria Child became engaged to a Harvard graduate and lawyer, David Lee Child. A lawyer who was eight years older than she was, David Child was the editor and publisher of the Massachusetts Journal. He also had political interests: he served briefly in the Massachusetts State Legislature and often spoke at local political rallies.

Lydia Maria and David knew each other for three years before their engagement in 1827, and were married a year later. While they shared middle-class backgrounds of struggle for financial stability and also shared intellectual interests, their differences were considerable, too. She was frugal where he was extravagant. She was more sensual and romantic than he was. She was drawn to the aesthetic and mystical, while he was most comfortable in the world of reform and activism.

Her family, aware of David's indebtedness and reputation for poor fiscal management, opposed their marriage. But Maria's financial success as an author and editor allayed her fears on that account and, after a year of waiting, were married in 1828.

After their marriage, he drew her into his own political interests. She began to write for his newspaper. A regular theme of her columns and of children's stories in Juvenile Miscellany was the mistreatment of Indians by both the New England settlers and earlier Spanish colonists.