[3] The same year, Maria White's brother William introduced her to his Harvard College classmate, James Russell Lowell.

However, her father Abijah White, a wealthy merchant, insisted that the wedding be postponed until Lowell had gainful employment.

[5] In the winter of 1843–44, Maria White and her mother left the bleak neighborhood of Boston to spend the spring in the milder climate of Philadelphia.

Strong friendships followed, and as a natural result of these, Maria White's tendency towards the antislavery movement, then in its unpopular beginnings, was strengthened and continued.

Maria White was urged to remain longer in Philadelphia, and visit some of her new friends in their own homes, but her reply was characteristic: "No, no.

[5] White, who became involved in movements against intemperance and slavery, joined the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and persuaded Lowell to become an abolitionist.

Frail, delicate, and plagued by ill-health throughout her life,[citation needed] Maria White Lowell died on October 27, 1853,[11] at the age of 32 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"[12] In 1870, when Emily Dickinson first met Thomas Wentworth Higginson, he mentioned the poetry of Maria White Lowell.