“Lydia Maria Child has a good letter to the editor.”

Clarissa Goodell to Lavinia Goodell, March 3, 1866

Best known for her Thanksgiving poem “Over the river and through the woods,” Lydia Maria (pronounced Mar – eye – ah, the same pronunciation as Lavinia Goodell’s sister Maria Goodell Frost’s name) Child was an  influential nineteenth century woman author. She was also an ardent abolitionist who was well known to Lavinia Goodell and her family. (In an 1861 letter, Child mentioned Lavinia’s father William, complimenting the  “close, hard logic of Goodell.”)

Child was born Lydia Maria Francis in Massachusetts in 1802.  She wrote her first book at age 22, Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times, a scandalous novel for its time telling the story of a Native American warrior who fell in love with a white woman. Child’s rapidly rising literary star gained her friends in the highest pantheons of literature, including Edgar Allen Poe and John Greenleaf Whittier. Children’s books and a children’s magazine, The Juvenile Miscellany, followed.

In 1828, she married David Lee Child, an idealistic lawyer, writer, abolitionist, and believer in women’s rights. His reckless business ventures condemned the couple to a life of debt, and the money Maria earned from her writing barely kept them afloat.  

In the early 1830s, the Childs met William Lloyd Garrison and became active in the antislavery movement, a commitment shared by the Goodell family.

“Miss Lily Peckham is now preparing herself for the ministry.”

Juniata Sentinel (Mifflintown, Pennsylvania), January 4, 1871

A previous post discussed Lily Peckham (1843-1871), who was active in the woman’s rights movement and who may or may not have briefly practiced law in Milwaukee.

Lily maintained a busy schedule in the last two years of her life. According to newspaper accounts, she attended and spoke at women’s rights conventions in Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, New York, and Providence, R.I. Reporters complimented her speeches but also commented on her appearance, with the Chicago Evening Post referring to her as “the beautiful and bewitching Milwaukee lawyeress,” and an Iowa newspaper touting her “lady-like appearance and manner and intellectual cast of features.”

Lily contributed to and was a Milwaukee agent for the Revolution, the official publication of the National Woman Suffrage Association formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to secure a suffrage through a federal constitutional amendment.

“She succeeded far beyond my utmost expectations.”

Allan Pinkerton’s comment on Kate Warne

Although Lavinia Goodell and Kate Warne never met, in February of 1861 they shared a common interest: following the progress of Abraham Lincoln’s journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C.  On the afternoon of February 19,  twenty-one year old Lavinia joined throngs of other New Yorkers to watch the president-elect’s carriage procession in mid-town Manhattan. (Read her account here.)

While Lavinia was in Manhattan, Kate Warne, who was approximately twenty-eight years old and was in charge of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency’s Female Detective Force, was in Baltimore trying to ascertain if there were credible threats to Lincoln’s safety. It turned out that there were, and Kate helped thwart them.