Abigail "Abba" Alcott (née May; October 8, 1800 – November 25, 1877) was an American activist for several causes and one of the first paid social workers in the state of Massachusetts.

[2] A woman suffragist and an activist for the temperance movement, the poor, and the abolition of slavery, Abigail May Alcott imbued strong values in her four children.

[3] Such humanitarian ideals extended beyond her household to the city of Boston, Massachusetts, where she accepted a full-time job as a social worker in 1848.

The recipes were similar to the diet depicted in Transcendental Wild Oats (1873), Louisa May Alcott's fictionalized account of Fruitlands.

[5] The death of Elizabeth "Lizzie" Sewall, the model for Beth in Little Women, on March 14, 1858, made Abba depressed and sad.