Elizabeth Nicholson manuscripts

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was born on December 17, 1807, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the son of Quakers John Whittier and Abigail Hussey Whittier. He was an American poet and editor, and his first published poem, "The Exile's Departure," was printed in William Lloyd Garrison's Newburyport Free Press in 1826. He attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828. In addition to being a poet, Whittier was an involved abolitionist. He was a delegate to the Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and a member of the State Legislature in 1835. Whittier founded the antislavery Liberty Party in 1840, and ran for Congress in 1842. In the mid-1850s, he began to work for the formation of the Republican Party; he supported presidential candidacy of John C. Frémont in 1856.

Whittier published his first collection of poems in 1837, his first authorized collection in 1838, and the collection "Snow Bound" in 1866. In 1871, he edited an edition of John Woolman's Journal. John Greenleaf Whittier died on September 7, 1892, in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire.