Connelly Library

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. An actress and writer by profession, Fanny believed that it was her identity as an English citizen that turned her into a fervent abolitionist and viewing the horrors of slavery firsthand. Visiting a Georgia plantation owned by slave-owning husband, Pierce Butler, Fanny was shocked and appalled at the living conditions that the enslaved people endured. Determined to make their lives better, Fanny established a hospital and nursery for enslaved people on the plantation and taught many of the enslaved how to read. She also fought to ensure that married slaves on her husband’s plantation were not separated from each other. Her husband, Pierce, was appalled by her anti-slavery sentiment.

During her time on the plantation, Fanny kept a journal to document her experiences and observations. The journal included detailed first-hand accounts of the oppression that enslaved people faced on the plantation. 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 slavery. Fanny's outspoken opposition to slavery led to 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 pro-slavery views 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.  

As the daughter of the anti-slavery minded Fanny Kemble, and the pro-slavery-minded Pierce Butler, Sarah Butler Wister 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. 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. As an adult, she adopted the anti-slavery views of her mother. Sarah only infrequently mentions slavery in her diary, but she makes it clear that it is the main reason for her hatred of the Confederacy and the South. 

Photograph of Sarah Butler Wister, Historical Society of Pennsylvania