Ann Carroll Fitzhugh

Ann Carroll Smith ( Fitzhugh; 1805–1875) was an American abolitionist, mother of Elizabeth Smith Miller, and the spouse of Gerrit Smith. Her older brother was Henry Fitzhugh. Ann and Gerrit Smith's Peterboro, New York, home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Known as "Nancy," Ann Fitzhugh Smith frequently traveled via an enclosed carriage to permit her carriage to be used, in her absence, to convey veiled fugitives on their way to Canada. In 1822, Fitzhugh – living in Rochester, New York, and formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland – married Gerrit Smith. She was devout and was influential in her husband's religious conversion and beliefs about social reform and slavery. Abolitionist The Smith household hosted both abolitionist and early suffrage meetings in the pre-Civil War period. As a child in Chewsville, near Hagerstown, Maryland, she was given a slave, Harriet Sims, who was sold and was further enslaved in Kentucky, with her spouse Samuel Russell. Ann and Gerrit located the Russells, purchased their freedom in 1841, and aided them in settling at Peterboro.