An Uncommon Woman

“A welcome and important work, refuting earlier racist and sexist portrayals and restoring a fascinating historical figure.”

—John Rowen Booklist

“An important contribution to Civil War discourse, women’s studies, and Black history.”

—Barrie Olmstead Library Journal

“Well researched and written, and telling a dramatic and important life story, readers interested in nineteenth-century gender and race issues are sure to find An Uncommon Woman: The Life of Lydia Hamilton Smith an important contribution to Civil War-era scholarship, and a book well worth reading and adding to their library.”

—Tim Talbott Emerging Civil War

“Mark Kelley presents valuable new information about Lydia Hamilton Smith, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens’s mixed-race housekeeper and life companion, while providing refreshingly new perspectives on Stevens himself. The book offers important new information and insights by documenting how Smith managed Stevens’s household, took care of him as his health failed, and used her relationship with him to accumulate property and cross racialized social boundaries. It also contributes to our understanding of Stevens’s powerful political opposition to slavery and racial discrimination.”

—Faith Mitchell, author of Emma's Postcard Album: Black Lives in the Early Twentieth Century

“Mark Kelley has combed through hundreds of pages of previously unexplored archival material to assemble a compelling portrait of a powerful woman. Lydia Smith, often seen as a sideshow to a national figure—when seen at all—emerges as a gritty fighter challenging a world that, until the passage of the Reconstruction amendments, did not even consider her a citizen of the United States.”

—Tom Ryan, President & CEO of LancasterHistory

“Mark Kelley uncovered a treasure trove of archival materials to tell the remarkable life story of Lydia Hamilton Smith. Kelley rescues Smith from obscurity, and in doing so he makes the powerful case that she is one of the nineteenth century’s most influential women. Kelley recounts how Smith had to fight every step of the way to be treated with dignity and respect, insisting that her nation live up to the egalitarian principles of the Reconstruction era. Kelley masterfully combines exhaustive archival research with lively prose and historical context to bring this previously hidden historical figure to vivid life.”

—Amanda Frost, John A. Ewald Jr. Research Professor, University of Virginia School of Law