Abigail Hopper Gibbons
Abigail Hopper Gibbons, née Abigail Hopper was an American abolitionist, schoolteacher, and social welfare activist. She assisted in founding and led several nationally known societies for social reform during and following the American Civil War. She grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a Quaker family. Her father, Isaac Hopper, opposed slavery and aided fugitive slaves. She grew to share her father's beliefs and spent much of her life working for social reform in several fields. In 1841, the New York Monthly Meeting disowned Gibbons' father and husband for their anti-slavery writing. Abigail Gibbons resigned the following year, also removing her minor children. Gibbons was prominent during and after the American Civil War. Her work in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City was for civil rights and education for Black Americans, prison reform for women, medical care for Union officers during the war, aid to veterans returning from the war, to help them find work; and welfare. Because Gibbons was a known abolitionist, her house was among those attacked and destroyed during the New York City draft riots of July 1863.
Early life and career
Abigail Hopper was born in Philadelphia in 1801, the third of ten children. She was informally called Abby. Both her parents were proud abolitionists. Her father, Isaac Tatem Hopper, was of the Hicksite branch of Quakers. Her mother, Sarah Tatum Hopper, became a recommended minister for the Society of Friends and oversaw schools for black children, along with a committee.Pennsylvania had abolished slavery and many free people of color lived in Philadelphia. Her father 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 return to their masters for bounties. Called upon to protect the rights of African Americans, Isaac Hopper and his wife 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
Marriage and family
On February 14, 1833, Abigail Hopper married James Sloan Gibbons, a fellow Hicksite Quaker from New York, who was also an ardent abolitionist. In 1836, the couple moved to New York City. They had six children together—William, Sarah, Julia, Lucy, Isaac, and James. Isaac and James died in infancy. William died suddenly after an accident while he was attending Harvard University. Their daughters included Sarah Hopper Emerson, who published an edited collection of her mother's letters and a short biography of her; and Lucy Gibbons Morse (who married James Herbert Morse and had a family).
Quaker rejection
Some Quaker yearly meetings divided due to influences from deism, as well as differences between urban and rural members. In 1841, the New York Monthly Meeting, which was dominated by Hicksites, disowned Abigail's father Isaac Hopper and her husband James Sloan Gibbons for their writing and other activities against slavery. The following year Abigail Hopper Gibbons resigned from the Meeting in protest, also removing her and James' four minor children. She and her family maintained Quaker practices and faith but did not rejoin the Meeting.
Women's Prison Association
Gibbons became involved in a variety of social reform movements. For twelve years in New York, she was also president of a German industrial school for street children. In 1845, she and her father founded the Women's Prison Association (WPA) of New York City. She lobbied the city government for improvements in the city's prisons, advocated the hiring of police matrons, and urged the construction of separate prisons for women. They were then housed in the same facilities as men, and at risk of abuses. She frequently visited the various prisons in and around New York City.Under her leadership, in 1853 the Women's Prison Association separated from its parent, the Prison Association, and Gibbons obtained a New York State charter for her group. She led an aggressive program of legislative lobbying at the city and state level to improve prison conditions for women. She protested jail overcrowding and demanded that women prisoners be searched only by female matrons. She also believed that it