Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis

Purvis née Forten was born in 1814 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1][2] She was one of the "Forten Sisters" consisting of three of the daughters of Charlotte Vandine Forten and James Forten: Sarah, Harriet Forten Purvis (1810–1875), and Margaretta Forten (1808–1875). The sisters, along with their mother, Charlotte Vandine Forten, formed the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.[3]

Sarah was a poet. She used pen names, "Ada" and "Magawisca", as well as her own name.[4] She is credited with writing "The Grave of the Slave" which was published in 1831 in the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator. That poem was subsequently set to music by Frank Johnson.[5] The song was often used as an anthem at antislavery gatherings.[4] She is also credited with writing "An Appeal to Woman," published in the Liberator in 1834.[3]

In 1838 Sarah married Joseph Purvis with whom she had eight children.[3] Joseph Purvis was the brother of Robert Purvis, who was the husband of Sarah's sister Harriet.[1]

She died in 1883.[5][6]

Sarah and her sisters received private educations and were members of the Female Literary Association, a sisterhood of Black women founded by Sarah Mapps Douglass, another woman of a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia. Sarah began her literary legacy through this organization where she anonymously developed essays and poems.[7]

The pen name "Ada" was taken up by another poet, Eliza Earle Hacker (1807–1846), a Quaker abolitionist from Rhode Island. A case has been made that the two poets have been confused on occasion because, although of different races, both women were ardent abolitionists writing during the same era, on the same topic. Specifically, Ada's poem "Lines: Suggested on Reading 'An Appeal to Christian Women of the South' by Angelina Grimké," was most likely written by Hacker but often attributed to Forten and included in African-American writing anthologies.[4]