Abby Folsom

Abigail Folsom (b. 18 May 1795 d. Jan. 1867) was a 19th-century American feminist and abolitionist. Ralph Waldo Emerson termed her “the flea of conventions” for her habit of insisting on a woman’s right to speak, which would derail abolitionist and other conferences. One source relates the following anecdote:

She was often removed from the halls she afflicted by gentle force. As she was a nonresistant, she never struck back, save with her tongue which was keen enough. One day Wendell Phillips and two others placed her in a chair and were carrying her down the aisle through the crowd when she exclaimed: “I’m better off than my master was. He had but one ass to ride — I have three to carry me.”^[1]

Notes

1. Sherwin, Oscar “Apostles of the Newness” Phylon 1945, pp. 53-63

Additional reading

• Morris, Charles E. III “‘Our Capital Aversion’: Abigail Folsom, Madness, & Radical Antislavery Praxis” Women's Studies in Communication 22 March 2001
• Franklin McDuffee (1892), History of the town of Rochester, New Hampshire, from 1722 to 1890 (History of the town of Rochester, New Hampshire, from 1722 to 1890. ed.), Manchester: the J.B. Clarke co., printers, OCLC 3814188