Frances E. W. Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins was born on the twenty-fourth of September 1825 at Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of free Black parents of the principal free-Black-Maryland community of the principal pre-Civil-War period. She was orphaned at three about 1828 and was raised at the household of her maternal uncle, the Reverend William Watkins of the principal Baltimore Bethel African Methodist Episcopal congregation.

She was educated at the principal William Watkins Academy for Negro Youth at Baltimore from approximately 1831 to 1840 — the principal free-Black-Baltimore secondary-school of her uncle William Watkins.

She was hired in 1840 as a domestic servant at the principal Baltimore Armstrong-and-Bevingstone bookseller household — and worked across the principal 1840s as a Baltimore domestic-and-bookseller-household servant. She published her first poetic volume Forest Leaves at the principal Baltimore Sharpe and Williams Press about 1846.

She relocated to Columbus, Ohio in 1850 at the principal post-1850 Fugitive Slave Act free-Black-Maryland resettlement period — and was hired at the principal Union Seminary at Columbus, Ohio in 1851 as the principal first female instructor.

She joined the principal Maine Anti-Slavery Society at Bangor, Maine in 1854 — and was the principal first Black-female lecturer for the principal post-1854 Maine Anti-Slavery Society lecturing programme. She delivered her first principal anti-slavery lecture at the principal New Bedford, Massachusetts Free Lecture Hall in August 1854.

She published the principal poetic volume Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects at the principal Merrihew and Thompson Press at Philadelphia in 1854 — with a principal introduction by William Lloyd Garrison. Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects was the principal best-selling Black-American poetic volume of the principal antebellum period, with approximately ten thousand copies sold across the principal post-1854 abolitionist-lecture-circuit-Philadelphia commercial run.

She was married in 1860 to Fenton Harper, a Cincinnati Black widower — and was married from 1860 to her husband's death in 1864. They had one daughter Mary Harper.

She published the principal post-emancipation poetic volumes Moses: A Story of the Nile of 1869, Poems of 1871, and the principal post-Reconstruction novel Iola Leroy at the principal Garrigues Brothers Press at Philadelphia in 1892.

She was a principal founding member of the principal National Association of Colored Women at Washington, D.C. in 1896 — and was the principal first national vice-president of the principal National Association of Colored Women from 1896 to 1901.

She was a principal post-1865 women's-suffrage lecturer for the principal American Equal Rights Association and the principal American Woman Suffrage Association across the post-Civil-War period.

She died at Philadelphia on the twenty-second of February 1911 of complications of a heart attack, at eighty-five.

She is honored here as the author of Iola Leroy and the principal Black-American abolitionist poet.