Sydney Watkins

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s parentage remains obscure. Orphaned as a toddler, Harper perhaps barely remembered them. While her father’s name remains unknown, Harper noted her mother’s name as Sydney Watkins in her Freedmen’s Bank account records. Harper’s mother was a free woman; an 1867 sketch of Harper notes that it was through the “assertions of her[Harper’s] grandmother” that Sydney Watkins’ freedom was secured.[1] It is not clear if Harper’s grandmother was able to buy her own freedom, but her efforts meant that Sydney and her child would always be legally free even if she had married an enslaved person.