Read Part One HERE
In this story I focus on a woman named Martha Coffin Pelham Wright. She lived from 1806 - 1875. Martha was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Both of her parents were devout Quakers and raised the family within the church community known as the Society Of Friends. When she was three, the family moved to Philadelphia where her father thought they might find a cultural environment better suited to the practice of their religion. When Martha's father died a few years later, her mother operated a boarding house and a small shop to support her large family.
After three years in boarding school, Martha fell in love with Peter Pelham, an army captain and one of her mother's boarders. Although Captain Pelham was not a Quaker, which elicited objections from Martha's family, the couple married in 1824, and soon thereafter moved to Florida.Two years later, however, Peter died and Martha returned to her family with her baby daughter.
In 1827, she moved with her mother to Aurora, New York, where she taught in a school that her mother had opened there. It was in Aurora that Martha met and married a lawyer from Philadelphia, David Wright. The two lived in Aurora until 1839, and then moved to Auburn, New York, where they remained for many years.
P.S. I will continue my story on Martha Coffin Pelham Wright in my next post.
Read Part Sixty-Two HERE
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