Marriage and Family
Forten married two times: his first wife, Martha "Patty" Beatty died after only a few months of marriage, and in 1806, he married Charlotte Vandine (1786–1886). Their children were Robert Bridges Forten, Margaretta Forten, Harriet Forten Purvis, Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis, Charlotta Forten, William Deas Forten, Mary Theresa Forten, Thomas Willing Francis Forten and James Forten, Jr., who, with his brother Robert, succeeded his father in the family sail-making business up.
Like his father, Forten's son Robert was a vigorous anti-slavery activist. Forten's daughters Harriet and Sarah Louisa married the abolitionist brothers Robert Purvis and Joseph Purvis, respectively. The Fortens' daughter Margaretta was an officer of the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1845 and a lifelong educator.
Carrying forward the family legacy to a new generation, the Fortens' granddaughter Charlotte Forten Grimké was a poet, educator and, of course, abolitionist.
- When James Forten died, he left behind an exemplary family, a sizable fortune, and a legacy of philanthropy and activism that inspired generations of black Philadelphians.
Read more about this topic: James Forten
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or family:
“Adultery is the vice of equivocation.
It is not marriage but a mockery of it, a merging that mixes love and dread together like jackstraws. There is no understanding of contentment in adultery.... You belong to each other in what together you’ve made of a third identity that almost immediately cancels your own. There is a law in art that proves it. Two colors are proven complimentary only when forming that most desolate of all colors—neutral gray.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Providing for one’s family as a good husband and father is a water-tight excuse for making money hand over fist. Greed may be a sin, exploitation of other people might, on the face of it, look rather nasty, but who can blame a man for “doing the best” for his children?”
—Eva Figes (b. 1932)