American abolitionist and teacher (died 1901)

Anna Gardner

Anna Gardner was an American abolitionist and teacher, as well as an ardent reformer, a staunch supporter of women's rights, and the author of several volumes in prose and verse. In 1841, she published the call for the first antislavery meeting in Nantucket, at which Frederick Douglass made his first public speech and electrified his audience. She delivered many lectures during the years immediately preceding the American Civil War, and after the war, she taught in freedmen's schools in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In 1878, she returned to New York, where soon afterward, she was severely injured in a carriage accident.