The First American Women Who Led the Way Towards Change - The Grimke Sisters' Life - Infancy through Youth

The following is part 1 of an 8-part series about the history of two privileged sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. We will follow their life from infancy through to their death. You will better understand the struggles they encountered through life and how they found and embraced their purpose in life and became the first American Women Advocates of Abolition and Woman's Rights.

They were very humble yet bold, practiced gratitude and gave service. They believed in God, but through most of their life they struggled with finding the right religion. These two ladies left quite a legacy for women. The issues of their time may be different; however, the struggles and process are similar to what women experience today.

This story begins in Charleston SC where Sarah Moore Grimké was born in 1792 to a very prominent family (father was a judge on SC Supreme Court and mother was of a prominent SC family) who taught common sense, frugality and simplicity.

The sixth of fourteen children, Sarah was very independent, truthful, and had a clear sense of justice, even in her childhood. She never tried to conceal or excuse anything she did wrong, but accepted whatever punishment or reprimand she received.

She repeatedly regretted that her education, though it was considered at that time a good one, was entirely superficial, embracing only the kind of knowledge acquired for display. What useful information she received came from the conversations of her father and one of her brothers, Thomas, her "beloved companion and friend." Her father paid particular attention to her superior intelligence with pride and admiration, and often said if she was a male she would have made the greatest jurist in the land.

In Sarah's youth she spent six months a year at their country home, two hundred miles from Charleston, where she would live without seeing a white face other than family. She was very happy, except for one terrible drawback. Slavery was a millstone around her neck, and made her uncomfortable. She would write "My chief pleasure was riding on horseback daily. 'Hiram' was a gentle, spirited, beautiful creature. He was neither slave nor slave owner, and I loved and enjoyed him thoroughly."

One summer at their country home her father had her taught how to spin and weave Negro cloth. She also had to occasionally go to the field to pick cotton and learn how to shell corn, a process which sometimes blistered her little fingers.

Sarah was so sensitive to the trials of the slaves she grieved she couldn't share or ease them, and would often cry after one of the slaves were punished. When she was four or five she accidentally witnessed a terrible whipping of a servant woman and was so upset she tried to run away from home. When she knew one of the servants was to be punished, she would shut herself up and pray that the whipping might be averted.

Sarah wrote in her diary… "Perhaps I am indebted partially to this for my life-long detestation of slavery, as it brought me in close contact with these unpaid toilers." Sarah's sensitivity to the trials of the slaves was so great that she grieved for their suffering and her inability to protect them (This experience later helped her and Angelina find their purpose in life.)

When Sarah was quite young her father gave her a little African girl to wait on her. Sarah became much attached, treating her as an equal, and sharing all her privileges with her. But the little girl died after a few years, and Sarah refused another saying she had no use for her, and preferred to wait on herself. It was not until she was more than twelve years old that, at her mother's strong suggestion, she consented to have a dressing-maid.

In 1805 when Sarah was about twelve years old, the brother she was very close to, Thomas was sent off to Yale College, leaving her companionless and inconsolable. Then, a few weeks later, the birth of a little sister Angelina, brought her comfort and joy.

Sarah felt more than the ordinary affection of this sister, but the tenderness of a mother, and a mysterious affinity which, despite the twelve years' difference in their ages, connected them as one throughout life. She at once begged to be godmother for her sister; but her parents, thinking this was only a childish whim, refused. However, day after day she asked, answering her father's arguments she was too young for such a responsibility by saying that she would be old enough when it became necessary to exercise any of the responsibility.

Her parents consented, and at the baptism as the Godmother of her new sister Angelina, Sarah promised to train this baby sister in the way she should go. She actually raised her little sister and had a very close relationship throughout life.

Many years afterwards, in describing her feelings on this occasion, she said: "I had been taught to believe in the efficacy of prayer, and I well remember, after the ceremony was over, slipping out and shutting myself up in my own room, where, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I prayed that God would make me worthy of the task I had assumed, and help me to guide and direct my precious child. Oh, how good I resolved to be, how careful in all my conduct, that my life might be blessed to her!"

Sarah took her duties seriously in forming the character and training the mind of her "precious Nina," as she so often called her. For many years Angelina followed closely in Sarah's footsteps, until that seed sown by the older sister, ripened, and bore its fruit in a power and strength and individuality which gave Angelina the leadership. Sarah stepped back in amazement at Angelina's development, so much beyond her thoughts or hopes.

From the first, Sarah took almost entire charge of her little god-daughter; and, as "Nina" grew out of her babyhood, Sarah continued to exercise such general supervision over her that "Nina" learned to look up to her and frequently addressed her as "Mother" when together and in her correspondence.

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