Early Years
Champney was born Elizabeth Johnson Williams in Springfield, Ohio, on February 6, 1850. Her parents, who were abolitionists, moved the family to Kansas Territory in her youth, to join the fight against the spread of slavery to Kansas. After the Civil War, she attended the Seminary for Young Ladies in Lexington, Massachusetts, where the artist James Wells Champney was her drawing instructor. She completed her education at Vassar College, where she received her A.B. in 1869, a member of the second class of Vassar graduates.
After graduation she returned to Kansas, to Kansas State Agricultural College in Manhattan, Kansas, where she served as Secretary for the college and the first instructor of drawing at the school.
While living in Kansas, she was engaged to be married to a farmer. However, the marriage apparently never took place, and in May 1873, she instead married James Wells Champney – her former drawing instructor – who happened to be traveling through Manhattan, Kansas, as part of a trip through the Louisiana Purchase to illustrate an article entitled The Great South by Edward King for Scribner’s Monthly. For the next three years, the new couple traveled through the southern United States, and then Europe, before settling on the East Coast. Her first published piece, a poem, was published six months after her marriage.
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