Julia Wilbur

Julia Wilbur (August 8, 1815 – June 6, 1895) was a Quaker abolitionist and suffragist. She kept a diary during the Civil War and in it she records events of historical significance as well as everyday happenings that provide a picture into life during that time. She is noted to have worked alongside Susan B. Anthony to establish voting rights for women. She was an early member and later secretary of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society (RLASS), which helped fund Frederick Douglass' newspaper. Early life and education Julia Ann Wilbur was born on August 8, 1815, in Milan, New York, the third child of Stephen Wilbur and Mary Lapham. She attended Nine Partners Boarding School in Dutchess County, New York, from 1829 to 1831. Her mother died in 1835 and her father soon after remarried. She remained at home helping to raise her siblings before she moved to Rochester, New York, in 1844 to become a teacher. Civil War In 1862, the RLASS asked Wilbur if she were interested in working to help "contrabands": that is, the men, women, and children who escaped slavery by crossing into Union-occupied territory. She recorded in her diary the original request: "a teacher to go South & are inquiring for me." She agreed and traveled to Washington in October of that year, originally planning to stay in the nation's capital. However, officers of a group called the National Freedmen's Relief Association urged her to move across the river to Alexandria, Virginia, which the Union Army had entered at the start of the war, and to work as a relief agent, rather than a teacher.