Manuscript Location

Swarthmore College, McCabe Library, Special Collections, Friends Historical Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ New York

Date of Composition

ca. 1846

Description

Mariana Wright Chapman was born in New York City in 1843, the daughter of Quakers Aaron and Mary Willets Wright. She attended Friends Institute, later called Friends Seminary, until her family's move to Springboro, Ohio, in the early 1850s. She spent two years at Antioch College. In 1864 she married Noah H. Chapman under the care of Springboro Monthly Meeting. The young family moved east in 1880 and purchased a home in Brooklyn, New York. As their three sons and two daughters got older, Mariana became active in the struggle for women’s suffrage and became a leading figure in the movement. She died in 1907. The library’s collection of the Mariana Wright Chapman Family Papers includes a recipe book, dated approximately 1846, that was either compiled by or belonged to Caroline (Farrington) Willets (1794-1859), who was presumably the wife of a member of Mariana Wright Chapman’s mother’s family. The book is located in Series 3 Journals and Other Writings of the papers.