16926. Lydia 5 BIGELOW, daughter of David 4 ( Daniel 3, Joshua2, John1) and his second wife Deborah (HEYWOOD) BIGELOW, was born 28 October 1764 at Worcester, Worcester county, MA. She married there, on 07 October 1784, Zachariah Child, son of David and Mehitable (Richardson) Child. He was born 19 November 1763, and served in the Revolutionary War. They lived in Boylston, MA. He died 19 September 1845, and Lydia on _____ at _____ ?
Child of Zachariah and Lydia (Bigelow) Child, presumably born Boylston, MA:
16926.2 David Lee CHILD, b 8 July 1794; d _ Sept 1874 ; m 28 Oct 1828 Lydia Maria Francis (see below) the writer; she was born Medford 11 Feb 1802; d 20 Oct 1880 Wayland, MA. David was a Boston lawyer and journalist, and both were active in the anti-slavery cause.
Sources:
Bigelow Family Genealogy Volume. I page.172-173;
Howe, Bigelow Family of America;
Souvenir de Buckingham, Quebec, a commemorative pamphlet for
the 75th anniversary of the founding of Buckingham; biography (obit) of
Lawrence G. Bigelow, son of Levi.
Note:
Howe and Vol 1 list the family as Childs...................ROD
Subject: Child family
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 11:15:29 -0500
From: "Nancy Dunn" < ndunn@alltel.net >
Hello. I don't know alot about tracing my ancestors, but I have
a little info. I am Nancy Child Dunn (age 45). Zachariah Child
was my ancestor. My father is David Child (age 77). (I notice
there are several David Child's). We live in Georgia. I contacted
Ormond Roberts in West Boylston, MA and he sent me pictures of his house
which was built and lived in by Zachariah Child, also Zachariah's descendents.
I had bought a book on Lydia Maria (Francis) Child who married a David
Child and I found Ormond Roberts name listed as a source for the book.
More:
In my records some dates are a little different. I don't think
you had when David Lee Child died. It was September 1874 in Wayland,
MA. Zachariah's last name was Child (no s). The information
I have was done by a historian where Lydia Maria Child and David Child
lived. Zachariah and Lydia (Bigelow) had 12 children. I think
you only list 10. The information on the children and dates were
taken from the record in the Child family bible in possesion of Lydia Child
(Field) Merrill, Oraville, California. The birthdates you have do
not match the ones taken from the Child family bible. For instance,
Lydia (who only lived a month) was born Oct. 18, 1791 and died November
17, 1791. You have on the Bigelow page that she was born June 1798.
I assume the dates I have are correct since they were taken from a family
bible. I can send you the other dates of the 12 children if you wish.
I also have copies of photos of Zachariah's house at different periods
of time. Nancy Dunn
There is an interesting article on the front page of today's (Thurs
11/21/02) Wall Street Journal about Lydia Maria Child,
abolitiionist and author of the Thanksgiving poem "Over the River."
The WSJ website, if my memory is correct, requires payment to
access, so I won't even try to provide a link, but there is more information
about Mrs Child at:
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/lydiamariachild.html
Anyway, I checked my database, and she was a Bigelow by marriage.
Her husband, David Lee Child, was the son of Zachariah Child
and Lydia Bigelow. (He was my 4th cousin 5 generations removed.)
Al Streit
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was a novelist, editor, journalist and scholar
who
produced a body of work remarkable for its brilliance, originality and
variety,
much of it inspired by a strong sense of justice and love of freedom. Little
known
today, in her own time she was a famously radical abolitionist. She was
a student
of world religions with a breadth of vision and understanding extraordinary
for her
time. She was lonely religiously, dissatisfied with the institutional church
and hungry
for spiritual nourishment. Child is now remembered primarily, if at all,
as author of
the Thanksgiving poem, "Over the river and through the woods . . . " She
deserves
an honored place in American and in Unitarian history, though she was critical
of
the Unitarianism of her day.
Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Lydia was the youngest of seven children
of
Susannah Rand Francis and Convers Francis, a successful baker and businessman.
Though the home atmosphere reflected her father's stern Calvinism, she
grew up
under the wing of her bookish older brother Convers and attended local
schools
and Medford's First Parish, an orthodox Congregational church. When she
was
nine, her brother left home to attend Harvard College. Possessed of an
eager,
inquiring mind, Lydia missed his encouragement in her studies, but she
was free to
use the library of the Rev. David Osgood, the First Parish minister.
In 1814, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her favorite
sister Mary, her father decided Lydia would be
better off in Mary's new home in Norridgewock, Maine. There Lydia helped
with household chores but continued to
read, study and correspond with her brother. She also visited a nearby
Penobscot settlement, beginning a lifelong
interest in Native Americans.
In 1819 Lydia took a teaching position in Gardiner, Maine where she discovered
the thought of Emanuel Swedenborg.
"You need not fear my becoming a Swedenborgian," she wrote her brother
Convers in May, 1820. "I am more in
danger of wrecking on the rocks of skepticism than of standing on the shoals
of fanaticism. I am apt to regard a system
of religion as I do any other beautiful theory. It plays round the imagination,
but fails to reach the heart. I wish I could
find some religion in which my heart and understanding could unite; that
amidst the darkest clouds of this life I might ever
be cheered with the mild halo of religious consolation."
Returning to Massachusetts in 1821, she was baptized at First Parish in
Medford. Thereafter she always preferred her
chosen baptismal name, Maria. Still in her teens, she was engaged in a
religious search that would continue all her life.
Though she was living with her brother, now a Unitarian minister at First
Parish in Watertown, and attending his church
regularly, she became a member of the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem
in 1822. Apparently, she maintained
some connection there until the 1830s, when the pro-slavery stance of the
pastor made her doubt "whether such a
church could have come down from heaven." Later she was drawn to the preaching
of William Ellery Channing, though
she despaired over his reluctance to embrace abolitionism wholeheartedly.
She found Unitarianism "a mere half-way
house, where spiritual travelers find themselves well accommodated for
the night, but where they grow weary of
spending the day."
In Watertown Maria set to work on a novel, Hobomok: A Tale of Early Times,
1824, the first historical novel
published in the United States. The story of was of a colonial New England
girl who, when her fiancé was lost at sea,
turned for support to a sympathetic Native American, lived with him in
his village and bore his son. When her English
lover returned, Hobomok nobly encouraged her to marry her fiancé,
who adopted the half breed boy. The novel drew
on Maria's Maine experience to give an unusually sympathetic picture of
Native Americans, commonly thought of as
savages. Though she published anonymously, Maria was soon known as the
author and was an instant celebrity. She
continued to write novels and stories and became editor of The Juvenile
Miscellany, a new and popular children's
magazine, one of the first of its kind.
In 1828 Maria married David Child, an idealistic but improvident lawyer
and journalist whose debts exposed him to
litigation and imprisonment and drained his wife's earnings. Theirs was
a loving marriage of like minds in political
matters, though David's ardor for good causes drew him into one impractical
venture after another. The following year
Maria published The Frugal Housewife, describing her ingenious methods
of making do with little means. The
popularity of the book helped to keep the household afloat as the couple
moved from one temporary home to another.
Maria wrote five volumes of the Ladies Family Library, short biographies
exemplifying feminine virtues, published
from 1832 to 1835, for the growing audience of middle-class women. She
included two of her heroines, Germaine de
Staël and Manon Roland, known for their independence of mind. The
last two volumes ambitiously covered The
History and Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations.
In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison began publication of his abolitionist newspaper,
the Liberator. Maria later recalled that
Garrison "got hold of the strings of my conscience, and pulled me into
Reforms. . . . Old dreams vanished, old
associates departed, and all things became new." She threw her support
to Garrison and the Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society. Closely associated with active abolitionists and
Unitarians like Henry and Maria Weston
Chapman, Louisa and Ellis Gray Loring, Wendell Phillips and Samuel J. May,
she began to write for the cause.
Publication of An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans,
1833 marked a turning point in
Child's career. Outspoken in her condemnation of slavery, she pointed out
its contradiction with Christian teachings,
described the moral and physical degradation it brought upon slaves and
owners alike, not omitting the issue of
miscegenation, and not excepting the North from its share of responsibility
for the system. "I am fully aware of the
unpopularity of the task I have undertaken," she wrote in the introduction,
"but though I expect ridicule and censure, it is
not in my nature to fear them."
The public was far from ready to accept what were considered extreme views.
Sales of her books fell off, publishers
refused to accept anything she wrote, and she lost her editorial post with
The Juvenile Miscellany. The already
strapped Childs paid a steep price, but more abolitionist tracts and stories
followed.
From 1841-43 Lydia Maria Child served successfully as editor of the National
Anti-Slavery Standard, the weekly
New York newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She and David
were listed together on the masthead, but
he stayed behind attempting to start a sugar beet industry in Massachusetts.
"Such as I am, I am here," she wrote in her
first editorial, "ready to work according to my conscience and my ability;
providing nothing but diligence and fidelity,
refusing the shadow of a fetter on my free expression of opinion, from
any man, or body of men and equally careful to
respect the freedom of others, whether as individuals or societies."
Two years later dissension within the movement caused Maria to resign the
post. Garrison advocated staying out of
government, even to the extent of refusing to vote, as a protest against
union with slaveholders. New York abolitionists
opposed his position, and Maria, who had built the Standard's circulation
as a family newspaper, felt it would alienate
the audience she wished to reach with an antislavery appeal.
She separated from the movement but stayed on in New York and continued
writing. Still hungry for a satisfying church
affiliation, she commented, "The Unitarian meetings here chill me with
their cold intellectual respectability." Nor did the
Swedenborgians or Episcopalians meet her needs. The art and music in the
city fed her soul, though she was appalled
by the poverty. She published Letters from New York, 1843 and 1845, popular
collections of her regular columns in
the Standard. Fortunately, New York State law allowed Maria to separate
her income from David's and to build up
some savings protected from his debts.
Returning to Massachusetts, the Childs settled in the Wayland home of Maria's
aging father, with occasional intervals,
her home for the rest of her life. Here she completed her three-volume
work, The Progress of Religious Ideas
through Successive Ages, 1854. She intended these volumes to remove "the
superstitious rubbish from the sublime
morality of Christ" and to give respectful attention to other world religions.
Despite the immense labor of her research
and positive reviews, the work did not sell well. Thomas Wentworth Higginson
commented that it was "too learned for
a popular book and too popular for a learned one."
Meanwhile, the uproar precipitated by the 1850 Compromise and related events
roused Maria's abolitionist spirit.
When John Brown raided the Harper's Ferry arsenal, his example, Maria wrote,
"stirred me up to consecrate myself
with renewed earnestness to the righteous cause for which he died so bravely."
She wrote to Brown, praising his
courage and offering to come and nurse his wounds. She sent a copy of her
letter to Governor Henry Wise of Virginia,
who responded condemning Brown's action. When the correspondence was published
in the New York Tribune,
Maria received a flood of congratulations from the North and condemnation
from the South.
Living in Medford for the winter of 1860-61, Maria plunged into Boston
activism, writing that "When there is
anti-slavery work to be done, I feel as young as twenty." Back in Wayland
when war broke out, she gathered supplies
for the "contrabands," slaves who fled for safety to Union lines, and compiled
her Freedmen's Book, a reading primer
for former slaves.
After the war Maria supported the suffrage cause. She was a founder of
the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage
Association, though she believed black men should have the vote first.
She also renewed her work on behalf of Native
Americans, deploring the requirement that Cherokees leave their tribal
lands and upholding the right of native people to
their own language and religion.
When a group of Unitarians founded the Free Religious Association in 1867,
Maria discovered their viewpoint agreed
with her own. She attended FRA meetings regularly during her stays in Boston,
more frequent after David's death in
1874. In 1878 she published her own "eclectic Bible" of quotations from
the world's religions, Aspirations of the
World, her motive, "to do all I can to enlarge and strengthen the hand
of human brotherhood."
Free of David's care and enjoying financial security for the first time
in her life, she gave generously to causes dear to her
heart. When she died on October 20, 1880, her estate was valued at $36,000.
Wendell Phillips gave the eulogy in a
service at her Wayland home. She was "ready to die for a principle and
starve for an idea," Phillips said. "We felt that
neither fame, nor gain, nor danger, nor calumny had any weight with her."
She was buried beside her husband in the
town's old burial ground.
Child's papers can be found at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Massachusetts; the Boston Public Library;
the New York Public Library; the Milton Ross Collection, Corona del Mar,
California; Cornell University Library;
the Library of Congress; the
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; the Medford Historical
Society, Medford, Massachusetts; the Schlesinger
Library at Radcliffe, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Houghton Library at
Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, Massachusetts; and the
Wayland Historical Society, Wayland, Massachusetts.
Most of her correspondence is published on microfiche in The Collected
Letters of Lydia Maria Child, edited by Patricia G. Holland,
Milton Meltzer, and Francine Krasno (1980). A smaller version of this is
available: Milton Meltzer and Patricia B. Holland, eds.,
Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880 (1982).
Aside from the works mentioned in the article above Child wrote Anti-Slavery
Catechism (1836), Philothea, a Romance (1836), The
Evils of Slavery and the Cure of Slavery (1836), Duty of Disobedience to
the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), Isaac T. Hopper: A True
Life (1853), The Patriarchal Institution, as Described by Members of its
Own Family (1860), and The Right Way, the Safe Way,
Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies (1860).
Modern biographies of Child include Helene G. Baer, The Heart Is Like Heaven:
The Life of Lydia Maria Child (1964); Milton
Meltzer, Tongue of Flame: The Life of Lydia Maria Child (1965); William
S. Osborne, Lydia Maria Child (1980); Deborah Pickman
Clifford,
Crusader for Freedom: A Life of Lydia Maria Child (1992); and Carolyn L.
Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural
Biography of Lydia Maria Child (1995). Lori Kenschaft's Lydia Maria Child:
The Quest for Racial Justice (2002) is a short
biographyaimed at high school students. John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a
biographical introduction to
Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1882)
< rodbigelow@netzero.net
> 
