Family Life

She was born Mary Eliza Church in Memphis, Tennessee, in the midst of the Civil War. Her birthday was on September 23, 1863. Her parents were both black and spent most of their lives as slaves.  History is unclear on whether or not Mollie, as her family called her, began her life as a slave herself.

Mollie's father, Bob Church, had been born a slave on a Mississippi cotton plantation. He was the son of a white steamboat captain, Charles Church, and one of his slaves named Emmeline. From the beginning of her life her father modeled bravery and courage; he stood up against racial injustice.  

Her father and her mother Louisa Ayers Church were both light skinned African Americans, and their family lived a comfortable life in a white neighborhood.  Her parents were divorced when she was very young, and when she was six years old Mollie went to live with her mother in New York.  

Mollie had a brother named Thomas who was four years younger.  They grew up protected from the difficulties that other black people faced in those days.  Mollie didn't learn of the condition most black people lived in until her grandmother, a former house slave, told her stories of the brutalities that slaves faced.  Her grandmother's stories inspired Mollie to write the book "A Colored Woman in a White World." 

Mollie married Robert Terrell, one of the first African American's to graduate from Harvard University.  They had four daughters together, three of which died in their first few years of life.  They later adopted their niece.  Robert died at the age of 62. 

Mollie's husband Robert

Mollie's father Bob Church