Maria Stewart

Maria W. Stewart (Maria Miller) (1803 – December 17, 1879) was an American domestic servant who became a teacher, journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. The first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, whites and black, she was also the first African-American woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women’s rights and make a public anti-slavery speech.

The Liberator published two pamphlets by Stewart: Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build (which advocated abolition and black autonomy) in 1831, and another of religious meditations, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria Stewart (1832). In February 1833, she addressed Boston’s African Masonic Lodge, which soon ended her brief lecturing career. Her claim that black men lacked "ambition and requisite courage" caused an uproar among the audience, and Stewart decided to retire from giving lectures. Seven months later, she gave a farewell address at a schoolroom in the African Meeting House ("Paul's Church"). After this, Stewart moved to New York City, then to Baltimore, and finally Washington, DC, where she worked as a schoolteacher, and then head matron at Freedmen's Hospital, where she ultimately died.

She was born Maria Miller, the child of free African-American parents in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803. At the age of five Maria lost both parents and was sent to live with a minister and his family. She continued as a servant in that home until she was 15, without receiving any formal education. Between the ages of 15 and 20, Maria attended Sabbath School before church service on Sundays and developed a lifelong affinity for religious work.

On August 10, 1826, Maria Miller married James W. Stewart, an independent shipping agent, before the Reverend Thomas Paul, pastor of the African Meeting House, in Boston, Massachusetts. She took not only his last name but his middle initial. Their marriage lasted only three years and produced no children; James Stewart died in 1829. The executors of his estate deprived Maria as his widow of any inheritance. However, James had served in the War of 1812 and eventually a law was passed allowing veterans' widows their husbands' pensions.

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