Her grandparents' house, which she wrote about visiting, was restored by Tufts University in 1976 and stands near the Mystic River on South Street, in Medford, Massachusetts.

During this time, her brother Convers, by then a Unitarian minister, saw to his younger sister's education in literary masters such as Homer and Milton.

[1] Francis chanced to read an article in the North American Review discussing the field offered to the novelist by early New England history.

In 1826, she founded the Juvenile Miscellany, the first monthly periodical for children published in the United States, and supervised its publication for eight years.

[3] Child wrote that her book had been "written for the poor ... those who can afford to be epicures will find the best of information in the Seventy-five Receipts" by Eliza Leslie.

She "surveyed slavery from a variety of angles—historical, political, economic, legal, and moral" to show that "emancipation was practicable and that Africans were intellectually equal to Europeans.

Her Appeal attracted much attention, and William Ellery Channing, who attributed to it part of his interest in the slavery question, walked from Boston to Roxbury to thank Child for the book.

It was both an educational and a major fundraising event, and was held annually for decades, organized under Maria Weston Chapman.

While she was editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, Child wrote a weekly column for the paper called "Letters from New-York", which she later compiled and published in book form.

During their stay in New York, the Childs were close friends of Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker abolitionist and prison reformer.

[1] Child also served as a member of the executive board of the American Anti-Slavery Society during the 1840s and 1850s, alongside Lucretia Mott and Maria Weston Chapman.

[citation needed] During this period, she also wrote short stories, exploring, through fiction, the complex issues of slavery.

[7] She published an anti-slavery tract, The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act: An Appeal to the Legislators of Massachusetts, in 1860.

[9] Eventually Child left the National Anti-Slavery Standard, because she refused to promote violence as an acceptable weapon for battling slavery.

Along with Angelina Grimké Weld, another proponent for peace, she acknowledged the need for the use of violence to protect anti-slavery emigrants in Kansas.

[citation needed] Child published her first novel, the historical romance Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times, anonymously under the gender-neutral pseudonym "an American".

It contributed to the founding of the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners and the subsequent Peace Policy in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.

[12] In 1855 she published the 3-volume "The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages", within which she rejected traditional theology, dogma, and doctrines and repudiated the concept of revelation and creeds as the basis for moral action,[13] arguing instead "It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work that theology has done in the world" and, in commenting on the efforts of theologians, "What a blooming paradise would the whole earth be if the same amount of intellect, labor, and zeal had been expended on science, agriculture, and the arts!

"[14] Child's An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans pushed for emancipation by highlighting the life of an enslaved Muslim man named Ben Solomon.

[16] At her funeral, abolitionist Wendell Phillips shared the opinion of many within the abolition movement who knew her, "We felt that neither fame, nor gain, nor danger, nor calumny had any weight with her.