In recognition of Women’s History Month, we spent some time reviewing primary source documents and secondary readings to learn more about literary icon, Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved West African child turned educated woman and author. Whether you have read her published poems or walked by her Boston Women’s Memorial statue between Fairfield Street and Gloucester Street on Commonwealth Avenue, explore our selection of facts from the life and career of Phillis Wheatley. We hope from our brief selection readers will delve deeper into Wheatley’s life with the list of links at the end of the post.

1. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was an enslaved woman from West Africa, who gained international fame for her book, Poems on Various Subjects.

2. The most comprehensive account of Phillis Wheatley’s life was published by Margaretta Matilda Odell in a book entitled, Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, A Native African and a Slave. The book was published by George W. Light in Boston in 1834. Light also produced the first American publication of Wheatley’s book of poetry in 1834.**

3. Phillis Wheatley assumed her surname from John Wheatley, the man who purchased her as a “faithful domestic” for his wife, Susannah. Her first name Phillis was the name of the ship that brought her to America.

4. It is estimated that Phillis was seven or eight years old at the time of her purchase, based on the rate that she was losing her baby teeth.

5. A short time after Phillis arrived at the Wheatley house on King Street in Boston (now State Street), the Wheatley’s young children, Mary and Nathaniel, introduced her to writing letters with chalk. After displaying great scholastic aptitude, Phillis was allowed to learn to read and write. Odell’s book reports that, “she [Phillis] was not devoted to menial occupations, as was at first intended; nor was she allowed to associate with the other domestics of the family, who were of her own color and condition, but was kept constantly about the person of her mistress”. Phillis was the only enslaved person in the household that received the luxury of an education.