Biography

"Author, Poetess. Famed under her nom de plume Grace Greenwood. The first woman journalist in the Washington field. Daughter of Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke and Deborah Baker Clarke. Her contributions frequently appeared in The New York Mirror. She worked for many years as a correspondent for the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers in New York, Chicago, and California. She married Leander K. Lippincott in 1853 and they had a daughter, Annie Grace, born Oct. 3, 1855. Her husband left the country in 1876 after indictment for land fraud. Greenwood lectured extensively before and during the Civil War, particularly regarding her abolitionist stance and to other social issues, such as prison and asylum reform, and the abolition of capital punishment. She also wrote on women's issues, advocating for women's right to vote and to receive equal pay for equal work. Her reports on her travels to the American west in the early 1870s were influential for the mass migration west. She wrote under the names Sara J. Clarke, Sara Lippincott, and Grace Greenwood."