Frances Wright, widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, utopian socialist, abolitionist, social reformer, and Epicurean philosopher, who became a US citizen in 1825.
40 Facts About Frances Wright
2.
Frances Wright was vocal in her opposition to organized religion and capital punishment.
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Frances Wright authored A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States Without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South.
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Frances Wright's father was a wealthy linen manufacturer, a designer of Dundee trade tokens, and a political radical.
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Frances Wright corresponded with Adam Smith and was sympathetic to the American patriots and French republicans, including Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and Thomas Paine.
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Frances Wright's siblings included an older brother, who died when Frances was still young, and a sister named Camilla.
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Wright's mother died young, and her father died in 1798, when Frances was about the age of two.
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In 1813, when Frances Wright was sixteen, she returned to Scotland to live with her great-uncle, James Mylne, a philosophy professor at Glasgow College.
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Frances Wright spent the winter months in study and writing and the summer months visiting the Scottish Highlands.
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Frances Wright was interested in the works of Greek philosophers, especially Epicurus, who was the subject of her first book, A Few Days in Athens, which she had written by the age of eighteen.
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Frances Wright studied history and became interested in the United States' democratic form of government.
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The group's opposition to religious clergy influenced Frances Wright's own emerging philosophy.
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In 1821 Frances Wright traveled to France at the invitation of the Marquis de Lafayette and met with him in Paris.
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At one point Frances Wright encouraged him to adopt her and her sister.
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Frances Wright's request put a strain on the relationship with General Lafayette's family and no adoption took place.
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Frances Wright returned to Lafayette's home in France for a six-month visit in 1827 to work on a biography of him.
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Frances Wright joined Lafayette for a two-week stay at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation in Virginia.
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In February 1825, when Lafayette headed south, Frances Wright traveled northwest to visit Harmonie, George Rapp's utopian community in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
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Frances Wright visited the Rappite colony established in Indiana, which was named Harmonie.
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When Lafayette returned to France, Frances Wright decided to remain in the United States, where she continued her work a social reformer.
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Frances Wright's early writing career included her book, Few Days in Athens, which was a defense of the philosophy of Epicurus, written before the age of eighteen.
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Frances Wright's book is an example of an early nineteenth-century humanitarian perspective of the new democratic world.
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Historian Helen Elliott pointed out that Frances Wright's travelogue was "translated into several languages and widely read by liberals and reformers" in Great Britain, the United States, and Europe.
24.
In early 1825, after spending time at former President Jefferson's home in Virginia and Robert Owen's utopian settlement at New Harmony, Frances Wright began developing her plans for an experimental farming community.
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Frances Wright published A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States Without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South, a tract that she hoped would persuade the US Congress to set aside federal land for the purpose of promoting emancipation.
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Frances Wright founded a community at this wilderness site, which she named Nashoba.
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Frances Wright's plan was for the slaves to gradually acquire their freedom through their labor on the property.
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Frances Wright planned to eventually colonize the newly emancipated slaves to areas outside the United States.
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Frances Wright joined in the early efforts to clear land and build log cabins for its inhabitants, which included blacks and whites.
30.
Frances Wright contracted malaria in the summer of 1826 and had to leave the property to recover her health in New Harmony, Indiana, and visits to France and England.
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Frances Wright campaigned for reforms to marriage and property laws.
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Frances Wright was an activist in the American Popular Health Movement in the 1830s and advocated for women being involved in health and medicine.
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Frances Wright married French physician Guillaume D'Arusmont in Paris, France, on July 22,1831.
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Frances Wright had first met him at New Harmony, Indiana, where he was once a teacher.
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Frances Wright eventually settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she bought a home in 1844 and attempted to resume her career as a lecturer.
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Frances Wright continued to travel the lecture circuit, but her appearances and views on social reform issues were not always welcome.
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Frances Wright published her final book, England, the Civilizer in 1848.
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Frances Wright fought a lengthy legal battle to retain custody of their daughter and control of her own personal wealth.
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Frances Wright died on December 13,1852, in Cincinnati, Ohio, from complications of a broken hip after falling on ice outside her home.
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Frances Wright is buried at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.