Early Life and Career
Abigail Hopper was born in Philadelphia in 1801, the third of ten children. She was informally called Abby. Her father, Isaac Tatem Hopper, was of the Hicksite branch of Quakers.
He became an active and leading member of The Pennsylvania Abolition Society. He often directly confronted slave kidnappers, who frequented Philadelphia and sometimes kidnapped free blacks for sale into slavery, as well as capturing fugitive slaves to gain bounties. Called upon to protect the rights of African Americans, the Hoppers garnered a reputation as friends and advisers of the "oppressed race" in all emergencies.
The Hoppers also sheltered many poor Quakers in their house, despite their own family's large size and the father's unstable financial status. The children early on were called to aid others.
Hopper served as an overseer of the Negro School at Philadelphia, founded by Anthony Benezet, a Quaker educator and abolitionist who supported education of African-American children. He also was a volunteer teacher in a free school for African-American adults.
Abigail grew up to share her parents' abolitionist sentiments. As a young woman, she taught school for several years in Philadelphia before her marriage and move to New York. She directed Quaker schools both before and after her marriage.
Read more about this topic: Abigail Hopper Gibbons
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“We do not preach great things but we live them.”
—Marcus Minucius Felix (late 2nd or early 3rd ce, Roman Christian apologist. Octavius, 38. 6, trans. by G.H. Rendell.
“Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)