Lucius Manlius Sargent was an American novelist, antiquarian, and temperance campaigner who belonged to the well-known Sargent family of Boston. Daniel Sargent Sr. (1730-1806) and Mary Turner (1744-1813), daughter of John Turner of The House of the Seven Gables, had seven children, the youngest of whom was born in Boston. His father was a merchant dealing in fishermen's supplies who had relocated from Gloucester to Boston and profited so greatly from his industry, prudence, and popularity that he occupied what was at the time a conspicuously expensive mansion, despite his reputation for thrift and a dislike of ostentation. He was the brother of businessman-politician Daniel Sargent and artist Henry Sargent (father of Henry Winthrop Sargent), the cousin of Judith Sargent Murray, an early advocate for women's equality, and the nephew of Paul Dudley Sargent, an American Revolutionary War veteran. His paternal grandpa was Epes Sargent, a Massachusetts General Court representative.