EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH MARGARET CHANDLER P/166

                                                        Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Elizabeth Margaret Chandler. She lived from 1807 - 1834.She was the youngest child and only daughter of Thomas and Margaret Evans Chandler. Her family were Quakers. Elizabeth lost her mother in infancy, was orphaned at nine, and was raised by her grandmother and three Quaker aunts in Philadelphia. She attended a Quaker school until twelve or thirteen and was an avid reader all her life.

At an early age she showed her talents as a poet: at nine she produced a poem called "Reflections on a Thunder Gust," at sixteen she began to publish some poems in the public press. At eighteen "The Slave Ship" brought her a prize from the editors of Casket, in which it was published.

Benjamin Lundy, the anti-slavery publisher, noticed "The Slave Ship" and reprinted it in the "Genius of Universal Emancipation." Lundy recruited Elizabeth as a regular contributor, and two years later she became the editor of the "Female Repository," the womens' department of his paper.

Elizabeth was the first American woman to make slavery the principal theme of her writing. Half of her published essays dealt with slavery, African life, the emancipation movement, or the American Indian. "The Slave Ship" employed a poignant theme which she used repeatedly: the wrenching despair and horror experienced by proud and independent Africans snatched from their native shores and transported in chains to the Americas and lifelong slavery.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-Seven HERE