Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) was an African American teacher, journalist, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. Born Maria Miller to free African American parents in Hartford, Connecticut, she was orphaned at the age of three and sent to live with a local minister as an indentured servant. She was educated at Sabbath School and married James W. Stewart, a merchant, in 1826. Following his death in 1829, she was excluded from his will and left to fend for herself. Around this time, she began lecturing to audiences of men and women of all races. She was the first known African American woman to lecture publicly on women's rights, religion, and abolition, publishing some of her speeches and meditations in pamphlets with the help of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator. After a poorly-received speech at Boston's African Masonic Lodge, Stewart abandoned lecturing to move to New York City and later Washington, DC, where she found work as a schoolteacher and head matron of Freedmen's Hospital.
