page_title: Charlotte Forten Grimké
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Charlotte Forten Grimké / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church located at 1701 15th Street, NW in Washington The congregation was founded in 1841 as the First Colored Presbyterian Church, and their current building was constructed in 1979. You can view the website here: www.15thstreetpresbyterianchurch.org
context_page_description: Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten Grimké was an African American anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator. She grew up in a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia. She taught school for years, including during the Civil War, to freedmen in South Carolina. Later in life she married Francis James Grimké, a Presbyterian minister who led a major church in Washington, DC, for decades. He was a nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and was active in civil rights.
  Her diaries written before the end of the Civil War have been published in numerous editions in the 20th century and are significant as a rare record of the life of a free black woman in the antebellum North.
context_section_description: Forten, known as "Lottie," was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Mary Virginia Wood (1815–1840) and Robert Bridges Forten (1813–1864), members of the prominent black Forten-Purvis clan of Philadelphia. Robert Forten and his brother-in-law Robert Purvis were abolitionists and members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, an anti-slavery network that rendered assistance to escaped slaves. Forten's mother, paternal aunts Margaretta Forten, Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis, and Harriet Forten Purvis, and grandmother, Charlotte Vandine Forten, were all founding members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Her grandfather, wealthy sailmaker James Forten, Sr., was an early equal rights activist in Philadelphia.
  While the Fortens were free northern blacks, Charlotte's mother, Mary Virginia Wood, was the daughter of wealthy planter, James Cathcart Johnston of Hayes Plantation, Edenton, North Carolina, and granddaughter of Governor Samuel Johnston of North Carolina.  Mary and her mother, Edith "Edy" Wood (1795–1846), were the slaves of Captain James Wood, owner of the Eagle Inn and Tavern in Hertford, Perquimans County, North Carolina.
  Edy Wood and James Cathcart Johnston carried on a longstanding relationship and had four daughters: Mary Virginia, Caroline (1827–1836), Louisa (1828-1836), and Annie E. (1831–1879). Johnston emancipated Edy and their children in 1832 and settled them in Philadelphia in 1833 where they rented a Pine Street home for two years from Sarah Allen, widow of  Richard Allen of Philadelphia's Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. The following year, from 1835 through 1836, Edy Wood and her children boarded with Elizabeth Willson, mother of Joseph Willson, author of Sketches of Black Upper Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia.
  After Mary Virginia Wood's 1836 marriage to Robert B. Forten, her mother Edy joined the Forten household and paid board to her son-in-law. When Mary Wood Forten died of tuberculosis in 1840, Edy Wood continued to care for her grandchild Charlotte alongside Charlotte's young aunt, Annie Wood, who was only six years older. Upon Edy Wood's death in 1846, Charlotte was raised by various members of the Forten-Purvis family, and her aunt Annie lived at the Cassey House where she was adopted by Amy Matilda Cassey.
  In 1854, Forten joined the household of Amy Matilda Cassey and her second husband, Charles Lenox Remond, in Salem, Massachusetts, where she attended the Higginson Grammar School, a private academy for young women. She was the only non-white student in a class of 200. Known for emphasis in critical thinking, the school had classes in history, geography, drawing and cartography, and placed an emphasis on critical thinking skills. After Higginson, Forten studied literature and teaching at the Salem Normal School, which trained teachers. Forten cited William Shakespeare, John Milton, Margaret Fuller and William Wordsworth as some of her favorite authors. Her first teaching position was at Eppes Grammar School in Salem, becoming the first African American hired to teach white students in a Salem public school.
caption: The Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church today
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