Louisa May Alcott.
Louisa May Alcott was a servant, seamstress, teacher, and Civil War Nurse, but she became famous as an author.
Born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Louisa was one of four daughters. She moved with her family to Boston, Massachusetts, at age two. As a young girl, the family moved again to Concord, Massachusetts. Growing up in a Transcendentalist household, she was surrounded by an intellectual, unconventional environment that fostered her love of writing. Receiving her education primarily from her father, Bronson Alcott, she was further educated by her father’s friends, people such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller.
Louisa May Alcott is widely known as the writer of Little Women, a self-reflective children’s book published in 1868. The book’s success led to other works based on Alcott’s life, such as Little Men and Jo’s Boys, and the money helped support her sisters and parents.
As she grew older, she became both an abolitionist and a feminist. During the Civil War, she volunteered to be a nurse in an army hospital in Washington, D.C., where she contracted typhoid fever. Later, she advocated for women’s suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts.
As she grew older, her health worsened, but she continued to write up until the end. She finally died of mercury poisoning, which she contracted when she received calomel treatments for the effects of typhoid. She died in Boston on March 6, 1888, at age 56, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
© Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.
Also See:
Women’s Suffrage in the United States
See Sources.