Women's History Month - Fanny Wright

 

Frances Wright was born in Dundee, Scotland, on September 6, 1795, to Camilla Campbell and her husband James Wright, a wealthy linen merchant. Fanny, as she was called, was the second eldest of three children. However, an older brother died when Fanny was still young. She and her sister Camilla were quite close throughout life. The girls lost their mother when Fanny was just two years of age. They then lost their father, James died not long after. The sisters were sent to England where they were raised by her mother’s family, the Campbells.

 

Wright believed in universal equality in education and feminism. She also opposed organized religion, marriage, and capitalism. Fanny followed social reformer, Robert Owen, of New Lanark Mills, and visited  him in his venture at his New Harmony in Indiana. Along with Owen, Fanny was a strong advocate for free public education.   

Wright was also a vocal advocate of birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, liberal divorce laws, the emancipation of slaves, and the controversial idea of interracial marriages.   

Taking inspiration from the New Harmony community in Indiana, Fanny purchased about 320 acres along Wolf River, about thirteen miles from Memphis. Here, she founded a community named Nashoba.  Fanny purchased about thirty slaves, nearly half of them children, to live in this experimental new community. Her plan was for the slaves to gradually acquire their freedom through their labor on the property. Wright also planned to eventually colonize the newly emancipated slaves to areas outside the United States. The settlement ultimately failed, not due to Fanny, but rather because of the mosquitos and the diseases they carried. 

Wright was a publisher, lecturer and writer as well as a social reformer.