Maria Stewart (Maria Miller) (1803 – December 17, 1879) was an African American public speaker, abolitionist, and feminist. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut and at the age of five became an orphan and was sent to live with a minister and his family, where she was a servant in their home. She later moved to Boston, and married James W. Stewart. He died after only three years of marriage, and she was cheated out of a considerable inheritance. She then embarked on a short (1831-1833) writing and public speaking career, for which she is best known. Her most famous speech was Religion and the pure principles of Morality The sure Foundation on which We Must Build. This and others were published in William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator.
She later moved to New York, and then to Washington, DC, where she was head matron of the Freedman's Hospital.
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God, in whose service alone is perfect freedom: We thank you for Maria Stewart, who witnessed that all are made in your image and likeness. Fill us, like her, with the perseverance to break every chain of enslavement that, by your Holy Spirit, your people may overcome bondage and ignorance; through the merits of Jesus Christ our redeemer, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.