Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was born in Medford, Massachusetts on February 11, 1802 to Susannah Rand Francis and Convers Francis. She was educated in Maine and trained to be a teacher. She taught school in Massachusetts until 1828, when she married Boston lawyer David Lee Child. Child was an abolitionist, women's rights activist, novelist, and journalist. She is best known for her poem Over the River and Through the Woods. She also published Juvenile Miscellany, a children's periodical, and was editor of the magazine from 1826 to 1834. Her first novels, Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times and The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution were published in 1824 and 1825. In 1833 she published An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, one of the first published works advocating for the emancipation of slaves without compensation for slaveholders. She was a strong supporter, fundraiser, and organizer in anti-slavery societies, such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which she was an elected member of the Executive Committee in 1839. She was also editor of the society's National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1840, and used her own literary career to explore the issue of slavery in fiction. She died on October 20, 1880 in Wayland, Massachusetts.