Origin Stories

Abstract Chapter 2 delves into the origin stories surrounding Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and suggests a more complex, nuanced reading of Harper’s early years and a mode of biography that reflects extant traces of Harper’s life. It first explores her youth in Baltimore by complicating representations of her relationship with her uncle, Black activist-teacher William Watkins; it argues that Harper existed in much wider networks beyond Watkins’s individual orbit. It then turns to Harper’s teaching at Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1850s, alongside future African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop John Mifflin Brown to study how Harper built networks she would later engage as an itinerant lecturer, activist, and writer. It concludes with discussion of the years of her marriage to Fenton Harper (1860–1864)—years that saw the near-lynching of her sister-in-law and the chaos of her husband’s probate, as well as key contributions to Black print culture.