Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick (1788–1867) was an American author of children's literature and an artist active during the nineteenth century. Born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Matthew Ridley and Catherine Livingston, the latter being the daughter of New Jersey Governor William Livingston. She attended school alongside Catharine Sedgwick, who would also become a prominent novelist, before marrying Catharine's brother, Theodore Sedgwick Jr., in a union that closely connected her to one of Massachusetts' most influential families.\n\nWhile Sedgwick established a literary footprint through her writing for children, she is also widely remembered for her artistic contributions. She painted a notable watercolor-on-ivory portrait of Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman, an enslaved woman who successfully sued for her freedom in a landmark 1781 court case. Freeman was represented in that case by Sedgwick's father-in-law, Theodore Sedgwick, and subsequently joined the Sedgwick household as a paid domestic worker, where Susan painted her likeness.\n\nSedgwick spent much of her life connected to the intellectual and social circles of Massachusetts. Following her death in 1867, she was interred in the "Sedgwick Pie," a unique circular family burial plot in Stockbridge. Her legacy remains tied to both her early American children's fiction and her historic visual documentation of Freeman.
