Frances Harriet Whipple Green

Background

Frances Harriet Whipple Green was born in Smithfield, Rhode Island. She was the daughter of George Whipple. Her ancestors were among the earliest settlers in the state.

Education

Green was educated in the district schools and later at a private school in Providence, giving evidence of a retentive memory and creative literary ability.

Career

By 1830, Green had attracted considerable attention by her poetic contributions to Rhode Island papers and had edited herself the Original, containing sketches of local interest, many of them her own.

From 1830 on she devoted herself to one cause after another, temperance, labor, suffrage, abolition, spiritualism, being “unfortunately for her personal comfort, ever on the unpopular side of every question in Rhode Island”.

In The Envoy, From Free Hearts to the Free (1840) and in Shahm-ali in Pursuit of Freedom; or, The Branded Hand (1858) she attacked slavery.

As editor and publisher of the Wampanoag and Operatives Journal of Fall River (1842 - 43), she turned her attention to the education, assistance, and encouragement of the female operatives in the manufacturing districts.

Displaying an equal interest in the laboring classes was her novel The Mechanic (1841).

In Might and Right, by a Rhode Islander (1844) she showed herself to have been a violent partisan of Thomas Dorr and an ardent supporter of his demands for more liberal suffrage in Rhode Island.

Of her verse, her best poem, according to Griswold, was Nanuntenoo, a Legend of the Narragansetts, of which three cantos were published in Philadelphia in 1848.

“The Dwarf’s Story, ” appearing in the Rhode Island Book (1841), Griswold describes as a “gloomy but passionate and powerful composition”.

Mrs. Green became interested in spiritualism, and for a time made her home with S. B. Brittan in New York City, contributing to his paper, the Univercoelum and Spiritual Philosopher, and assisting him in editing the Young People’s Journal of Science, Literature and Art.

Later, she contributed to Brittan’s spiritualist magazine, the Shekinah. About 1860, she removed to California.

After her marriage to William C. McDougall, as Frances H. McDougall, she made her last literary effort, Beyond the Veil (1878).

She died in Oakland, California.

Achievements

• A student of botany all her life, Frances Harriet published, in collaboration with Joseph W. Congdon, a Primary Class-Book of Botany, enlarged and republished in 1853 under the title: Analytical Class-Book of Botany. In addition to the above works she contributed many articles to the serial publications of her day, and in these most of her poetry appeared. Perhaps, her most popular work was the Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge (1838), followed by Eleanor's Second Book (1839), the actual story of a colored woman who had suffered from legal injustice.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Analytical Class-book Of Botany, Designed For Academies And Private Students: In Two Parts...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge

Personality

Possessing a disposition admirably tempered by thorough culture and mature reflection, a loving and hopeful philosophy of life - softened and sustained by every tender affection - Frances was yet invincible in her resistance of every form of evil.

Connections

On July 1, 1842, Frances Whipple was married to Charles C. Green, an artist of Springfield, Massachusets. This marriage proved unhappy, however, and in 1847, they were divorced.

In 1861, she married William C. McDougall.

Father:

George Whipple

husband:

Charles C. Green

husband:

William C. McDougall

References

• A Rhode Island Original: Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall