Lydia Maria Francis Child was born on 11 February 1802 in Medford, Massachusetts. Child was educated at a dame school in Medford and eventually attended a seminary school. In 1828, Lydia Maria Francis married David Lee Child, a political activist and lawyer. In addition to her already prolific career as a writer, Child became an advocate for abolition, the Women’s Rights Movement, and Indian Rights. In 1833, Child wrote An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. It supported the immediate emancipation of all slaves, with no compensation for slave owners. Child is also remembered as the author of the poem Over the River and Through the Woods (1844), as well as the Frugal Housewife (1829), The Progress of Religious Ideas: Through Successive Ages (1855), and the edited work Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1860). Lydia Maria Child died on July 7, 1880.