Lydia Maria Francis Child, born Lydia Maria Francis, was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist.
Her journals, fiction and domestic manuals reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. She at times shocked her audience, as she tried to take on issues of both male dominance and white supremacy in some of her stories.
Despite these challenges, Child may be most remembered for her poem "Over the River and Through the Wood" about Thanksgiving. 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.