Abby Kelley Foster was an American abolitionist and radical social reformer active from the 1830s to 1870s.
Background
On January 15, 1811, Abigail (Abby) Kelley was born the seventh daughter of Wing and Lydia Kelley, farmers in Pelham, Massachusetts. Kelley grew up helping with the family farms in Worcester where she received a loving, yet strict Quaker upbringing.
Education
She began her education in a single-room schoolhouse in the Tatnuck section of Worcester. Foster's daughter later wrote that Abby "attended the best private school for girls in Worcester. "
In 1826, as Worcester had no high school for girls and her parents could not afford a private seminary, Kelley continued her education at the New England Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island. After her first year of school, Kelley taught for two years to make enough money to further her education. In 1829, she attended her final year of schooling, having received the highest form of education any New England woman of her relatively moderate economic standing could hope to obtain.
Career
She became a follower of William Lloyd Garrison and in 1835–37 was secretary of the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838 she joined Garrison in founding the New England Non-Resistant Society. She took part in the first and second woman’s national antislavery conventions in New York City in 1837 and in Philadelphia in 1838, and at the latter she made her first address to a mixed audience (of men and women), a stirring speech that prompted abolitionist leaders to urge her to take to the platform regularly. She acceded to the idea, resigned her teaching job, and in May 1839 began a career as a reform lecturer. That career was a stormy one, bringing vituperation and sometimes even mob violence upon her as she was denounced regularly from the pulpit as immoral for daring to mount the public platform.
At the convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, Kelley’s appointment to the business committee was the occasion for a split in the ranks of the delegates; her conservative opponents left to form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, leaving her ally Garrison in complete control of his own organization. Her almost ceaseless lecturing took her as far west as Indiana and Michigan, and her travels were marked not only by personal abuse but also, more immediately, by frequent hardship. She continued to travel and lecture until 1861, although after 1847 Abigail Foster spent much of each year at their Worcester, Massachusetts, farm. During the 1850s she added appeals for temperance and women’s rights to her addresses.
Foster’s zeal and radicalism—she was outspokenly anticlerical and antigovernment almost to the point of anarchism—stirred opposition even, occasionally, among sympathizers. After the Civil War ill health limited her activities. She made a fund-raising tour of New England on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1870. On three occasions in the 1870s she and her husband refused to pay taxes on their farm on the grounds that she had been taxed without representation, being denied the vote. On each occasion the farm was bought by friends at public auction and returned to them.
Abby Kelley Foster died January 14, 1887, one day before her 76th birthday.
Achievements
Religion
Kelley and her family were members of the Quaker Meeting in nearby Uxbridge, Massachusetts.
Politics
Abigail Kelley Foster is remembered as an impassioned speaker for radical reform.
Kelley's views were radical as she worked with abolitionists such as Angelina Grimké. She became an “ultra”, advocating not only the abolition of slavery, but also full civil equality for blacks. In addition, Garrison's influence led her to adopt the position of “non-resistance", which went beyond opposing war to opposing all forms of government coercion. Radical abolitionists led by Garrison refused to serve on juries, join the military, or vote. The Garrisonian call for the end of slavery and the extension of civil rights to African Americans caused controversy. Kelley's advocacy of the radical abolitionist movement prompted some opponents to call her a “Jezebel", as what she proposed threatened their sense of social structure. On the other hand, many fellow abolitionists praised her public speaking skills and her dedication to the cause. Kelley’s influence was shown by activist women being called “Abby Kelleyites". Radical abolitionism became known as “Abby Kelleyism.
Membership
She was a founder and member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Connections
After a four-year courtship, Kelley married fellow abolitionist Stephen Symonds Foster in 1845. In 1847, she and her husband purchased a farm in the Tatnuck region of Worcester, Massachusetts and named it "Liberty Farm". She gave birth to their only daughter in 1847.