My Dear Mrs. PostPost, Amy Kirby

The Posts, Isaac (1798-1872) and Amy Kirby (1802-89), were prominent abolitionists who spent their most active years in Rochester, New York. Isaac was born on Long Island but moved to Scipio, New York, in 1823 with his first wife Hannah Kirby. After Hannah's death in 1827, he married her younger sister, Amy, a native of Jericho, New York. In 1836 the Posts moved to Rochester, where they became involved with Garrisonian abolitionism. The Posts often hid fugitive slaves, and Amy acted as vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1850s and 1860s. In addition to abolitionism, Amy was active in the women's movement, including the seminal 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, a meeting that she helped to organize. In 1848 the Posts also numbered among the first converts to spiritualism in Rochester, and Isaac soon attracted fame as a writing medium. Douglass first met the couple in 1842 when he stayed at their home during a lecture tour, and their friendship influenced his choice of Rochester as the base for his newspaper, the North Star. Hewitt, Women's Activism and Social Change, 61, 93, 107, 118, 131-34, 142-43, 169; Blake McKelvey, "Civic Medal Awarded Posthumously," RH, 22:10-11 (April 1960); DAB, 15:117. :

Please Shelter this Sister from the house of bondage till five O'Clock — this afternoon — She will then be sent on to the Land of freedom.

Yours Truly —

Fredk.