Harriet A. Jacobs

Harriet A. Jacobs. Abolitionist, Author, and Women's Rights Advocate. , Harriet A. Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, to Delilah Horniblow and Daniel Jacobs., Harriet and her brother John (who later lectured for the abolitionist movement) were orphaned at an early age and passed down to the Norcom family. To avoid the attentions of her new owner, Jacobs took a white lover and bore him two children. However, the man, a future congressman, broke his promise to free them., In 1835, Jacobs escaped and spent the next seven years hiding in a crawl space above her grandmother's storeroom. There she kept watch over her children, who had been purchased by their father and sent to live in the house. Reading and writing to pass the time, she gained the literary experience that enabled her to write her book years later., In 1842, Jacobs fled to New York, where she worked as a nursemaid, arranged for her children's freedom, and met Quaker reformer Amy Post, who became her confidante and urged her to make her story public., Jacobs was freed in 1852, and for the next five years wrote her autobiography. Lydia Maria Child, an accomplished writer with strong antislavery convictions, became Jacobs's editor. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now ranked with Frederick Douglass's Narrative and William Wells Brown's Clotel: Or, The President's Daughter as a major contribution to the genre of slave narratives., Jacobs became famous, although many thought her story was too fantastic to be true. She used her prominence to advantage, doing relief work for black soldiers and helping create schools for blacks after the Civil War., Jacobs had lived in Massachusetts for brief periods while fleeing from her master. After the war she rented a house on Trowbridge Street near Massachusetts Avenue, which she ran as a boardinghouse in 1870-1872 for the student sons of her white benefactors. In 1873 she moved to the corner of Story and Mount Auburn streets, where she lived for three years., Jacobs lived out her life in Washington, D.C., but was buried with her brother in Mount Auburn Cemetery., Related Cambridge African American Trail Markers , William Wells Brown, 29 Webster Avenue , J. Milton Clarke and Lewis Clarke, 2 Florence Place, Sources , Jessie C. Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women, 1992 , Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, 1861; Jean Fagin Yellin, ed., 1987 (photo)