Diaz, Abby Morton

DIAZ, ABBY MORTON (1821-1904). A successful writer of children’s stories, Abby Morton became a prominent member of the First Nationalist Club of Boston and a vocal advocate of Christian socialism. Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, she grew up in a prominent abolitionist family and lived for several years at the experimental community of Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. She taught school there and in 1845 married Manuel A. Diaz from Havana, Cuba. The marriage was short-lived, just long enough to produce three sons, one of whom died in infancy. Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Abby Morton Diaz achieved success as a writer of children’s stories.

During the Civil War, Diaz distributed piece goods to sewing women and took note of their poor working conditions and paltry wages. To assist working-class women in the unjust struggle for a livelihood, she joined with other middle-class reformers to establish the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union [WEIU]. She assumed the presidency and filled this office until 1892 when she stepped down to the vice-presidency, a position she kept until 1902. The WEIU, considered at the time a “cross-class sisterhood,” assisted wage-earning women, many from the New England countryside, in gaining vocational skills, suitable housing and temporary board, and health and legal aid. Diaz traveled frequently to help women establish their own local operations in other states, throughout New England and as far west as Minnesota. The WEIU, with headquarters on Boylston Street, closed its doors in 2006, then merging with Crittenton, Inc. to become the Crittenton Women’s Union, renamed EMPath in 2016, a Boston-area non-profit service agency dedicating to alleviating poverty.

Until her death, Diaz remained dedicated to the cause of social justice, most especially gender and class equality. Throughout her adult life, she lectured frequently on the necessity of all women to achieve financial and spiritual independence from men. In 1893, she published a novel inspired by Edward Bellamy, Only a Flock of Women, and called for government ownership of utilities, banking, and transportation as a means to lessen the competition that links the country to “the unscrupulous rule of self-interest.”

Cro, Ann B. "From Transcendentalism to Progressivism: The Making of an American Reformer, Abby Morton Diaz (1821-1904)." Master's thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2006.

Abby Morton Diaz Papers, 1879-1900. Finding Aid. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/resources/601