By the time she was nine years old she had lost both her parents, she and her brothers were living with their grandmother, Elizabeth Guest Evans (1744–1827), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She left school when she was about twelve or thirteen (sources differ), but continued to read and write with a passion.

After reading that poem, she was invited by Benjamin Lundy, a well known abolitionist and publisher, to write for his periodical, The Genius of Universal Emancipation.

[2] She also introduced one of the most famous abolitionist images, the kneeling female slave with the slogan "Am I not a Woman and a Sister".

Her brother Thomas Chandler purchased land near Tecumseh, Michigan in Lenawee County, about sixty miles south-west of Detroit, in order to start a farm.

After she moved to Michigan, she established the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1832 with her friend and neighbor Laura Smith Haviland.

[2]The Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society organization established a main link in the Underground Railroad to Canada.