Page 63 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

Louisa May

Alcott

6th Cousin

4 times removed

Common Ancestor

Father: Evert J. Wendell
Emden, E. Friesland (Hanover), Holland
(Germany)
1615 - 1709

Mother: Susanna Trieux
New York City, New York

1626 – 1660
Born: Died:
29 November 1832 6 March 1888
Germantown, Pennsylvania Boston, Massachusetts

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short
story writer and poet best known as the author of the
novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little
Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New
England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail
May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among
many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such
th
as Ralph Waldo Emerson (7 cousin, 3 times
removed), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau
th
(5 cousin, 4 times removed), and Henry Wadsworth
th
Longfellow (5 cousin, 5 times removed).
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the
family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical
success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A.
M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults that focused on spies and revenge.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord,
Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three
sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt. The novel
was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has
been adapted many times to the stage, film, and television.

As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860, Alcott began writing for
the Atlantic Monthly. When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the

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