The Wister family’s involvement in abolitionism is believed to date back to the years leading up to the Civil War starting with Sarah Logan Fisher Wister. Sarah, the matriarch of the Wister Family and a Quaker, is reported to have helped runaway slaves escape their capturers by hiding them on her Belfield estate. Although Quakers were some of the most prominent members of the abolitionist movement, their pacifistic views forbade them from taking part in any form of conflict or violence. Despite this, all six sons of Sarah Logan Fisher Wister fought in the Civil War as Union soldiers.

During the war, some members of the Wister Family such as Sidney George Fisher and Sarah Butler Wister kept diaries that detailed their support for abolitionism and their disdain for the Confederacy. After the war's end, a table scarf belonging to John and Sarah Wister was used as a visitor log for the Belfield estate. Dating back to at least 1893, many of the 110 signatures on the cloth had connections to the Civil War and abolitionist movement such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dr. William Henry Furness, and Julia Ward Howe, leading us to believe that the Wister family had close connections with the abolitionist movement in Pennsylvania. 

Although not related to the Wister Family by blood, Fanny Kemble was the mother-in-law of Owen Jones Wister and grandmother of acclaimed novelist Owen Wister.  Born in 1809, Fanny Kemble was the scion of the Kemble family, a family rooted in the English stage and acting world. As a young women, she aimed to be a writer. However, when her family began to struggle financially, Fanny offered to enter the acting world to drum up revenue. Catapulted into the upper echelons of English society and receiving positive reviews with every play, Fanny decided to trade in her English stage for an American one. Beginning her American tour in New York, she soon reached celebrity status in America. During her shows in Philadelphia, she found herself wooed by a young gentleman named Pierce Butler, the heir to a Georgia plantation empire. 

Fanny and Pierce married in Philadelphia and resided at Butler Place, a residence that once stood on the land that is now Kemple Park on Ogontz and Olney Avenues. The marriage was a tumultuous one.  Fanny refused to submit to Pierce’s strict controls and to align her beliefs with his. Needing a winter escape from their problems, the family traveled to the Butler Plantation in Georgia. Shocked and disgusted at how enslaved people were given the barebones necessities to survive, Fanny aimed to improve their lives, establishing a hospital and nursery on the plantation and teaching enslaved people how to read. She also began keeping a journal in which she took detailed notes about her experiences with slavery and her growing sense of being oppressed as a woman. Upon returning to Philadelphia, Fanny shared her journal with local abolitionists and wrote letters to numerous friends in which she described the horrors on the plantation and her contempt for enslavers. Fanny's outspoken opposition to slavery led to further marital tensions. Pierce forbade Fanny from publishing her journal, threatening to not allow Fanny access to their daughters.  Protracted divorce proceedings ensued. Finally free of Pierce, Fanny published her journal, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, in 1863. The journal received widespread acclaim in the North and in England for its “truthfulness,” while it was reviled in the South for its “lies.” 

Fanny's and Pierce's eldest daughter, Sarah, shared Fanny's abolitionist views. However, Fanny's and Pierce's youngest daughter, Francis, was sympathetic to the pro-slavery cause and her father. She stayed in the South, while Sarah settled in Philadelphia with her husband, Owen Jones Wister. The Wister family was supportive of Fanny's anti-slavery views and empathetic about her struggles with Pierce. For a time, Fanny lived with the Wisters. She eventually returned to England.

After a lengthy stay in London, Fanny returned to America and took up residence in a small cottage in the Philadelphia suburbs. There she began publishing her correspondence and segments of her journal as a source of income. Fanny died in 1893 with her former housemaid and friend at her side, leaving behind a distinguished legacy of acting, writing, and advocacy for African Americans.  

To read a more in-depth analysis and learn more about Fanny Kemble's life, click here.

Sarah Butler, the daughter of Fanny Kemble and Pierce Butler, was born in 1835 and grew up in Philadelphia at Butler Place. She married Dr. Owen Wister of Germantown in 1859. As the daughter of an anti-slavery minded mother and a pro-slavery-minded father, Sarah found herself in a precarious position on the subject of slavery. She had witnessed the horrors of the institution firsthand during trips in her youth to her father’s plantation. As an adult, those experiences lead her to embrace abolitionism.

From April 15, 1861, to September 4, 1861, Sarah kept a diary detailing the events of the Civil War and her opinions about the South.  She remarked in her diary that as a child she would cry in secret over the concept of slavery and the constant arguing that the topic would bring. Throughout the diary, Sarah expresses her disdain for the Confederacy. She calls for the execution of members of the Confederacy and the razing of cities loyal to their cause. Sarah writes about the arrest and defection of government officials to the Confederacy and offers her scathing opinions of these men. Her contempt for the Confederacy did not blind her to the many strategic advantages the South had over the North, which she stated with grave concern.

Sarah was not only sharp-tongued about Confederate military leaders. Throughout the diary, she discusses the shamefulness of Northern military leaders and her sadness that the lives of soldiers and officers were subject to the ignorance and incompetency of men who did not know how to lead. She believed that the wrong men were in charge, whether that was in the White House or at the local post office. However, she identifies a few military officials she considers to be effective leaders on account of their "youth" and "intelligence."  Wanting to help those suffering under poor military leadership, Sarah sewed uniforms for Union soldiers.

Although Sarah expressed disdain for enslavers, she viewed her father Pierce Butler, an enslaver, with sympathy. Throughout the diary, she expresses concern for her father’s well-being and worries about his close connections to the Confederacy. Sarah's sister, Frances, was also in close contact with Confederate military officials and was an avowed Southern sympathizer. Both Pierce and Francis moved to Georgia at the end of the Civil War in hopes of rejuvenating the family's plantations. Despite this, Sarah never lost love for her family and hoped they would be reunited. 

To read a more in-depth analysis of Sarah Butler Wister's Civil War diary, please click here.