Biography
Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born December 28, 1789 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Her mother was Pamela Dwight (1752–1807) of the New England Dwight family, daughter of General Joseph Dwight (1703–1765) and granddaughter of Ephraim Williams, founder of Williams College. Her father was Theodore Sedgwick (1746–1813), a prosperous lawyer and successful politician. He was later elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and in 1802 was appointed a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
As a child, Sedgwick was cared for by Elizabeth Freeman, a former slave whose freedom her father helped gain by arguing her case in county court in 1781. After winning her freedom Freeman accepted the Sedgwick's offer to work for them for wages. As a young woman, Sedgwick attended a finishing school in Boston to complete her education. One of her schoolmates, Susan Anne Ridley Sedgwick (1788–1867), would become her sister-in-law and a published author.
Read more about this topic: Catharine Sedgwick
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)