Caroline Wells Healey Dall

Caroline Wells Dall (née Healey; June 22, 1822 – December 17, 1912) was an American feminist writer, transcendentalist, and reformer. She was affiliated with the National Women's Rights Convention, the New England Women's Club, and the American Social Science Association. Her associates included Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller, as well as members of the Transcendentalist movement in Boston.

Early life and education

Caroline Wells Healey was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, daughter of Mark Healey, a merchant and investor, and his wife, Caroline (née Foster) Healey. She lived there off and on during her life. As a young woman, she received a comprehensive education, encouraged by her father to write novels and essays, and to engage in debates about religion, philosophy and politics. In addition to private tutoring, she attended a private school for girls run by educator Joseph Hale Abbot, until the age of fifteen.

In the fall of 1842, Healey taught at Lydia S. English's Female Seminary (later known as the Georgetown Female Seminary). Over Christmas 1842, a Unitarian minister from Baltimore, Charles Henry Appleton Dall, came to fill an open pulpit in Georgetown. Healey initially found Dall unappealing and she was shocked when he proposed to her by letter months later. But after a few weeks of correspondence, she accepted his proposal, resigned her teaching position, and moved to Baltimore.

She married Dall in 1844. The two lived in Toronto during the early 1850s, and returned to Boston in 1855. Her children included William Healey Dall, in whose Washington D.C. home she lived her later years.