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Julia Louisa Lovejoy

(1812-1882)

Born on March 9, 1812, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, Julia Louisa Hardy reportedly experienced a deep religious conversion at the age of nine. From that moment on she was a devout Methodist who thought her life to be a vehicle through which to influence the world around her. She had tentative plans to become a missionary, or to find some other method or arena where her religious ardor could be applied. At one point, she remarked, “if I have not done good, I have done evil.”

Fortunately for Lovejoy, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the ensuing conflict between free-state and proslavery interests in the territory of Kansas provided an outlet for her religious zeal and reform impulses. With her husband of twenty-plus years, Charles H. Lovejoy (an itinerant Methodist Episcopal preacher), Julia Louisa Lovejoy moved from New Hampshire to Kansas Territory early in 1855. The Lovejoys settled first at Manhattan and later Lawrence. In both locations, Lovejoy applied herself to the abolitionist cause by writing letters to eastern newspapers, including the Independent Democrat of Concord, New Hampshire. Her efforts took the form of a propaganda campaign, detailing, with some considerable embellishment, the bloodiness of the conflict between the two factions.

In 1864 Charles Lovejoy switched from the Methodist Episcopal Church to the free Methodist Church, and relocated to Lebanon, Illinois. Eventually, the Lovejoys returned to Kansas and settled a few miles south of Lawrence in rural Douglas County. Julia Lovejoy died there on February 6, 1882.