"Louisa-"Lulu" Matilda-Jacobs" (October 19,1833-April 5,1917)

Was born a slave in Edenton,North Carolina,she was the daughter of Congressman and newspaper Editor Samuel Tredwell Sawyer and his mixed-race enslave mistress Harriet Jacobs.

Louisa was educated in private schools in New York City,and Boston,Massachusetts,and trained as a teacher.From 1852-1854,she alternated living with the white abolitionist  Zenas Brockett family,who operated an underground Railroad station in Manheim,western New York State,and assisting her her mama at the Hudson River home of Home Journal editor Nathaniel Parker Willis.From1856-1858,Louisa lived with the family of Nathaniel's sister,author and journalists Fanny Fern and her husband,biographer James Parton.Fanny abusive rages and unfounded accusations of impropriety culminated in her attempt to physically attack Louisa in the spring of 1858.Louisa left the Patron's New York household abruptly and moved back to Boston.where she remained through the early 1860s.

After founding a Freedman's School in Alexandria,Virginia,during the Civil War,she joined Charles Lenox Redmond and Susan B.Anothy in early 1867 on an Equal Rights Association lecture tour in western New York State.In 1868 Louisa and her mama sailed to England to raise funds for a home for women and children in Savannah,Georgia,and on their return to the United States,Louisa taught at the Stevens School in Washington,D.C. During the early 1870s,Louisa and her mama ran a boarding house in Cambridge,Massachusetts,which catered to Harvard faculty and students.

In late 1879,Louisa and her mama moved to Washington,D.C.,and operated another boarding house patronized bu Governor William Claflin and Senator Henry L.dAWES OF Massachusetts.For at least two summers (1892 & 1883),she supervised the thriving canning and bakery business of the E.T.Throop Martin family at their family estate,"Willowbrook," in upstate New York.Louisa started her own jam and preserves business in Washington business in Washington in 1883 while simultaneously teaching sewing and cooking in the Girls Industrials School at Howard University.In late 1884,with her mama ill but insistent that they be hospitable to their second family,Louisa reluctantly accepted geologist Bailey Willis and his wife as boarders.In the spring of 1887,Louisa and her mama boarded James Monroe Trotter,the District of Columbia recorder of deeds.

From 1891-1893,Louisa worked in the U.S.Cenus Bureau.In 1896 she participated in the gathering of the Colored Women's League at the home of Frederick Douglass.After her mama's death in 1897,she became assistant matron,at the National Home for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington,D.C. from 1903-1908,she worked as preceptress at Miner Hall,Howard University.Louisa never married,retired at the age of 75.

She died in Brookline,Massachusetts,at the home of longtime family friend Edith Willis (Grinnell),one of the white children her mama had help to raise.