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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

1825-1911

Name: France Watkins Harper

Birthplace: Baltimore MD

Status: Free Person of Color

Occupation/Training: Author, Lecturer, Reformer

Residence: Baltimore Maryland, Columbus Ohio, Little York, Pennsylvania,

Abolitionist Involvement: Born of free parents, she was orphaned while young, and was educated in a school run by her uncle Rev. William Watkins. She began working as a young girl of 13 for a Mr. Armstrong who took an interest in her learning, and urged her to read after chores each day. In 1845, she published a collection of poetry and prose called Forest Leaves of which no copy survives. She started teaching at the AME Union Seminary in Ohio, but then left for another position in Little York Pennsylvania. When the State of Maryland passed a law that all free persons who entered the state from the North, could be liable to sale as slaves, Frances decided to dedicate herself to the Anti-Slavery movement. She began to speak publicly, and was known for speaking without notes, with ease, grace, clarity and power. She toured nationally with the Women's Christian Temperance Union. After the war, she began to work for women's rights and women's suffrage. She died at the age of 85 in Philadelphia. She was most widely known for her poems. Many of her poems were abolitionist in nature and spoke to the plight of those in bondage.

Family: Name of parents not known. Husband--Fenton Harper Child--name not known

Place of Death: Philadelphia

Publications/References: Forest Leaves; Homespun Heroines by Hallie Q. Brown, Early Negro American Writers Benjamin Brawely

Links: http://education.ucdavis.edu/NEW/STC/lesson/socstud/railroad/franbio.htm
(the best of the three sites);
http://tqd.advanced.org/3337/harper.html;
http://www.bickley.com/harper.html

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