Sara G. Stanley (1837-1918)

January 18, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Ashley Jones

Lucy Laney School Marker

Lucy Laney School Marker

Image courtesy Digital Library of Georgia

Born in 1837 in North Carolina, Sara G. Stanley was a member of a free, educated and economically secure family.ย  She attended Oberlin College and later moved to Delaware after her family immigrated there.ย  Following the tradition of other free black women Sara joined the local ladies antislavery society.ย  As a representative of her organization she delivered a strong and forceful address at the 1856 meeting of the all male Convention of Disfranchised citizens of Ohio. Along with having her address published as an antislavery tract, Saraโ€™s writing appeared in the Weekly African American.

Between 1864 and 1870 Stanley served as a teacher for newly-freed slaves.ย  Her assignment took her to Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, and Alabama and her reports were regularly published by the American Missionary Association. In May 1868, Sara Stanley married Charles Woodward in Mobile, Alabama.ย  Woodward, a white northerner, had served in the Union army. The coupleโ€™s only child died in infancy and the Woodwards eventually returned to the North, taking up residence in New Jersey.ย  After her husbands death Sara supplemented her meager widowโ€™s pension by working for an engraver in Philadelphia. She also briefly returned to the South as a teacher at the Lucy Laney school for black women in Georgia.ย  In 1918 Sara Griffith Stanley Woodward died.ย  The cause of her death and place of her burial remain unknown.

About the Author

Author Profile

Ashley N. Jones is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington majoring in Public Health with a minor in Diversity. She is also on the Womenโ€™s Varsity Crew Team where she serves as the Team Commodore. After graduation Ashley is off to graduate school to pursue a Masterโ€™s degree in Social Work which will allow her to be employed in the field of family and child welfare.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Jones, A. (2007, January 18). Sara G. Stanley (1837-1918). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/stanley-sara-g-1837-1918/

Source of the Author's Information:

Ellen NicKenzie Lawson and Marlene D. Merrill, โ€œThe Three Sarahs: Documents of Antebellum Black College Womenโ€ in Edwin Mellen Press Studies in Women and Religion, Vol. 13. (New York, 1984); Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women In America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 11 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1993), p. 1104.

Further Reading