FAMOUS AMERICANS BORN ON FEBRUARY 20TH

ANGELINA EMILY GRIMKE was born in 1805, in Charleston, South Carolina.  She was an American politician, lawyer, abolitionist and suffragist.  She was born into an elite, slave-holding family that believed their girls should do everything the proper way.  This was not acceptable to the inquisitive and outspoken girl.  She often offended her traditionalist family.  She wouldn’t join their Episcopalian Church, but rather converted to the Presbyterian faith.  She eventually broke with them and took up with the Quakers, and also decided that Philadelphia, not the South, was the place for her to be.   She was very outspoken against the institution of slavery.  She eventually became impatient with the slow response of the Quakers to the slavery issue, becoming more extreme in her views on the subject.  She read periodicals such as The Emancipator and Garrison’s The Liberator.  She joined the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835.   She spoke before the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1837 – the first woman ever to do so.  She toured the Northeast and gave abolitionist and feminist lectures.  In 1838, she married Theodore Dwight Weld, an abolitionist leader.   He encouraged her activism, though not long after her health began to fail.  (d. 1874). cmveletrhy.