On Jan. 6, 1773, an African-American slave named Felix delivered a written request to the Massachusetts General Court. In it, he asked to end slavery. Felix’s petition reflected the talk …

In 1832, a young widower named Horace Mann moved into a Boston boardinghouse where he met two intellectual schoolteachers from Salem, Mary and Elizabeth Peabody. They were sisters. Mary fell …

Many of her contemporaries considered Lucretia Mott the greatest woman of the 19th century. A Quaker minister shaped by her Nantucket upbringing, she didn’t compromise her abolitionist beliefs. She also …

Sarah Josepha Hale famously campaigned to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, but less well known are her stealth efforts to bring the Christmas tree into American living rooms. Puritan New …

Harriet Hanson Robinson went to work as a Lowell mill girl when she was 10 years old to help support her family. She grew up to earn fame, if not …

Just how rowdy was a New England colonial Christmas? It depended on who was celebrating. But it bore little resemblance to Christmas today, and New Englanders found it a touchy …