Martha Griffith Browne

Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, Martha "Mattie" Griffith Browne grew up in a slaveholding family and was orphaned young. She later inherited several enslaved people, but opposed slavery and worked to secure their freedom. Her best-known book, Autobiography of a Female Slave (1857), was published under the name Mattie Griffith and drew attention for its fierce antislavery message.

After moving to Boston around 1860, she stayed active in reform movements. Sources describe her as involved not only in abolition, but later in women's suffrage and temperance as well. She married Albert Gallatin Browne in 1866 and continued writing and public work in Massachusetts.

Browne died in 1906. Though she is not as widely remembered as some of her contemporaries, her writing remains an important window into 19th-century reform culture and the moral urgency of the fight against slavery.