#6    Fanny Smith Portrait

With a big nose and corkscrew curls, Fanny Smith may not have been the prettiest or most fashionable of Peterborough’s 19^th century ladies but she played a role in one of the most important social movements in town and the nation before the Civil War.

Fanny Smith (1780-1858) was an unmarried woman, known to be somewhat eccentric and a bit of a problem to her family but she was also an outspoken advocate of the Abolitionist movement. She believed so strongly in Abolition and the equality of African-Americans that she dedicated her life to supporting the movement.  She may have been among the folks who invited Frederick Douglass to speak about his slavery experience at the Congregational Church in the 1840s.

A single woman without heirs, Smith left her estate to promote, “the education of colored girls” and commissioned an obelisk to stand over her grave in the Village Cemetery. The monument was not to memorialize her life but rather was dedicated, “to the glorious cause of emancipation.  May God prosper it, and all the people say, Amen.”  Unfortunately, she died in 1858 just a few years her abolitionist dream was realized.