The daughter of Isaac Hopper, Abby Hopper Gibbons bore and went beyond the legacy of her father. Like all bearers of the family name, Hopper Gibbons was a tenacious and empathic activist who devoted her life to soothing the wretched conditions of others. She is best known for her abolitionism and prison reformism, but can also be seen as an early feminist icon. Though she was raised a Quaker, she abandoned the creed later on in life.

Abby Hopper Gibbons was born December 7, 1801 in Philadelphia. Margaret Hope Bacon, in her biography of Gibbons entitled Abby Hopper Gibbons: Prison Reformer and Social Activist, notes that Gibbons, like Isaac, was a fun-loving and courageous fighter, humble and unfond of pomposity (Bacon, 8). These qualities colored her personality and career throughout her life.

In 1832, she moved to New York City to join the rest of her family, wherein she ran a Hicksite girls’ school for the New York Monthly Meeting (Bacon, 21). However, she moved back to Philadelphia shortly after to marry James Gibbons. Again, they moved back to New York in 1835 once anti-abolitionist sentiment became threatening, and because James had little job prospects in Philadelphia.

Here, Abby participated in sundry anti-slavery conventions and joined the Manhattan Anti-Slavery Society, where she grew aware of the gendered restrictions against women politicking and which foreshadowed her role in the women’s rights movement that emerged, in part, from the anti-slavery movement in the 1840s (Bacon, 33).

According to the Forgotten Feminists Museum, once the Civil War erupted, Abby volunteered to work as a nurse at a Union hospital in Washington, D.C. She then went to Virginia to help set up two field hospitals right on army battlegrounds---for one of which she became the head matron. After the war, she founded the Labor and Aid Society, which helped reintegrate war veterans into civilian life.

Perhaps this business influenced her similar, and most well-known, work for the Isaac T. Hopper Home and the Women’s Prison Association. Gibbons co-founded the WPA in 1854 in response to frustrations her and her friends had with the male-dominated New York Prison Association. According to Bacon, this began the apotheosis of Gibbons’ career, namely, “speaking up for women prisoners and other objects of her charity” (Bacon, 60). The WPA, similar to the PANY, visited and recorded the conditions in the city prisons, and reported their findings to the city government (Bacon, 63).

Abby also worked as a member of the board of the Isaac T. Hopper Home, which helped and housed female ex-convicts until they were able to sustain themselves vice-free. Gibbons worked for the Home until she was ninety-one, which is a mind-boggling testament to her strength, endurance, and passion.

She died on January 16, 1893, peacefully. A newspaper at the time reflected that “she had more than a man’s courage, combined with more than a woman’s tenderness. She was such an exceptional character that nature gives but few of them to any single generation” (Bacon, 172). Thankfully, through her works and legacy, she can belong to this generation as well, and each generation everafter.

Sources:

Abigail Hopper Gibbons. The Forgotten Feminists Museum, www.forgottenfeminists.com/abigail-hopper-gibbons/.

Bacon, Margaret Hope. Abby Hopper Gibbons: Prison Reformer and Social Activist. State University of New York Press, 2000.