Isabella Batchelder James

Isabella Batchelder James (2 September 1819 – 6 August 1901) was a writer, abolitionist, and president of the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Commission. She was educated a school run by the Misses Inglis in Boston. During her childhood, the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, and later to Saco, Maine. In this work, she was tireless, as described by Mary S. Donovan in A Different Call: Women's Ministries in the Episcopal Church, 1850-1920:she organized local auxiliaries, raised money, recruited teachers, and kept up a steady correspondence with the latter once they were placed. She badgered General Oliver Otis Howard for more assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau, insisting that the bureau should pay for renting or repairing school buildings and should transport books and supplies to the new schools, and then writing to complain when the supplies did not arrive promptly. She was a relentless fundraiser; even after the Avery estate had given $25,000 to build a normal school in southern Virginia, she pursued the family for additional funds. She recruited both black and white teachers and was even willing to accept a non-Episcopalian “who was an excellent worker” as long as the latter would subscribe to the Episcopal form of worship. Under Mrs. James’s leadership, the Pennsylvania branch was the only organization in the Episcopal Church that provided effective support for freedmen’s programs.

In 1934 James' daughter, Mary Isabella Gozzaldi, presented 'Extracts from the Reminiscences of Isabella Batchelder James' before the Cambridge Historical Society, believing that 'living through the whole Victorian era, her recollections of that period may be of interest'. Also printed were James' recollections of the poet James Russell Lowell, who she had known well.