Maria Stewart, (née Miller) was born in Hartford, CT, in 1803. She was an abolitionist, women’s rights leader, educator, and author. Orphaned at five years old, Stewart was indentured as a domestic servant until the age of fifteen. Eventually, she moved to Boston, worked as a domestic servant, and was educated through Sunday School classes. Deeply influenced by her Christianity, as well as by activists like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and David Walker, and grounded in her own experiences as a Black women, Stewart published two pamphlets in The Liberator newspaper, "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build" in 1831, and "Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria Stewart" in 1832.  Based on these writings, Stewart began giving public lectures in September 1832, becoming one of the first women and the first Black woman to speak publicly to mixed-gender audiences in the United States. A subsequent scandal forced Stewart to leave Boston and move to New York, where she spent most of her time working in education. While in NYC, she gathered all of her writings and published them together in 1835. She then moved to Baltimore and Washington, DC, where she continued to work in education, and subsequently transitioned to nursing, eventually becoming Head Matron of the Freedmen’s Hospital.