Description
Book SynopsisLydia Hamilton Smith (18131884) was a prominent African American businesswoman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the longtime housekeeper, life companion, and collaborator of the state's abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens. In his biography of this remarkable woman, Mark Kelley reveals how Smith served the cause of abolition, managed Stevens's household, acquired property, and crossed racialized social boundaries. Born a free woman near Gettysburg, Smith began working for Stevens in 1844. Her relationship with Stevens fascinated and infuriated many, and it made Smith a highly recognizable figure both locally and nationally. The two walked side by side in Lancaster and in Washington, DC, as they worked to secure the rights of African Americans, sheltered people on the Underground Railroad, managed two households, raised her sons and his nephews, and built a real-estate business. In the last years of Stevens's life, as his declining health threatened to short-circuit his work, Smit
Trade Review“A welcome and important work, refuting earlier racist and sexist portrayals and restoring a fascinating historical figure.”
—John Rowen Booklist
“An important contribution to Civil War discourse, women’s studies, and Black history.”
—Barrie Olmstead Library Journal
“Mark Kelley presents valuable new information about Lydia Hamilton Smith, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens’s mixed-race housekeeper and life companion, while providing refreshingly new perspectives on Stevens himself. The book offers important new information and insights by documenting how Smith managed Stevens’s household, took care of him as his health failed, and used her relationship with him to accumulate property and cross racialized social boundaries. It also contributes to our understanding of Stevens’s powerful political opposition to slavery and racial discrimination.”
—Faith Mitchell,author of Emma's Postcard Album: Black Lives in the Early Twentieth Century
“Mark Kelley uncovered a treasure trove of archival materials to tell the remarkable life story of Lydia Hamilton Smith. Kelley rescues Smith from obscurity, and in doing so he makes the powerful case that she is one of the nineteenth century’s most influential women. Kelley recounts how Smith had to fight every step of the way to be treated with dignity and respect, insisting that her nation live up to the egalitarian principles of the Reconstruction era. Kelley masterfully combines exhaustive archival research with lively prose and historical context to bring this previously hidden historical figure to vivid life.”
—Amanda Frost,John A. Ewald Jr. Research Professor, University of Virginia School of Law
“Mark Kelley has combed through hundreds of pages of previously unexplored archival material to assemble a compelling portrait of a powerful woman. Lydia Smith, often seen as a sideshow to a national figure—when seen at all—emerges as a gritty fighter challenging a world that, until the passage of the Reconstruction amendments, did not even consider her a citizen of the United States.”
—Tom Ryan,President & CEO of LancasterHistory
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. James Buchanan’s Father Slept Here
2. A Girlhood in Gettysburg
3. Coming of Age
4. Another Name Change
5. Much More than a Housekeeper
6. Everyone’s on the Move
7. The Widow and the Congressman
8. Booze, Politics, and the Underground Railroad
9. Life, Death, and Marriage
10. The War Years
11. “In Health or in Sickness”
12. The Battles After the War
13. A Companion Lost
14. “It Was Mr. Dickey”
15. Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington
16. Mrs. Smith Versus the Executors
17. An Elderly Businesswoman
18. “A Noted Woman Gone”
19. Those Left Behind
20. A Life Well Lived
Notes
Bibliography
Index
