Lucretia Mott

Her father hunted whales and her mother ran the family business, trading Nantucket oil and candles for goods in Boston while he was at sea. Lucretia Coffin grew up watching a woman conduct commerce because the island's men were gone. The Coffins moved to Boston in 1803, and at 13 she was sent to Nine Partners, a Quaker boarding school in Dutchess County, New York. At 15 she stayed on to teach, and learned that the school paid its male teachers significantly more for the same work. She married one of them, James Mott, in Philadelphia on April 10, 1811. They had six children, five of whom reached adulthood. In 1821 her meeting recorded her as a minister. She had already been preaching three years.

She started by refusing the products of slave labor — no cotton cloth, no cane sugar — and it stayed in her sermons for half a century. In 1833 she helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society, which let her attend its first convention as a guest rather than a member, and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, integrated from the day it opened. London made her famous by insulting her: the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention barred its American women delegates and seated them apart. An Irish reporter called her the Lioness of the Convention anyway. Jane Hunt's invitation to a gathering in upstate New York produced Seneca Falls in 1848. She signed the Declaration of Sentiments, published Discourse on Woman in 1850, kept Roadside open to people escaping slavery, and in 1866 became first president of the American Equal Rights Association.

The convention she is remembered for launching produced a demand she argued against. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton moved that women secure the elective franchise, Mott opposed it, holding that electoral politics were corrupted by slavery and compromise, and the resolution carried without her. She came round soon enough, but the ordering problem never left. In 1867 she and Stanton campaigned in Kansas, where Black suffrage and woman suffrage sat on the same ballot, and the integrated association Mott presided over backed the men. Stanton and Anthony walked out and built a body for women only. Nine years earlier the work had nearly cost her more directly: after a mob burned Pennsylvania Hall on May 17, 1838 and turned toward her house, a friend led the crowd off down another street while she sat in her parlor and waited for it.

At her funeral nobody spoke. The silence held until someone asked who could, since the preacher was dead. She was buried at Fair Hill, a Quaker ground in North Philadelphia, and in 1885 the township around Roadside renamed itself La Mott. The first draft of the Equal Rights Amendment, written in 1923, was called the Lucretia Mott Amendment. Adelaide Johnson carved her in 1921 beside Stanton and Anthony for the Capitol, and Congress put the sculpture in the crypt, where it stayed until 1997 before anyone moved it up to the rotunda. The Quaker who thought the ballot beside the point ended up on the stamp issued in 1948 for the centennial of Seneca Falls.

Lucretia Mott's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society company
  Founded with Black and white women together and integrated from the start 1833
• Declaration of Sentiments other
  Signed at Seneca Falls, the convention she organized with Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1848
• Sermon to the Medical Students speech
  Published — an accusation of complicity aimed at a professional audience 1849
• Discourse on Woman book
  Her speech printed as a pamphlet on the restrictions placed on American women 1850
• Swarthmore College company
  Founded by Hicksite Friends, with Mott and her husband among them 1864
• American Equal Rights Association company
  An integrated body for Black and woman suffrage — she was its first president 1866

• 1806 aged ~13 Sent at 13 to the Nine Partners Quaker school in Dutchess County She stayed on as a teacher at 15 and found that the men were paid considerably more.
• April 10, 1811 aged 18 Marries James Mott at Pine Street Meeting in Philadelphia He had been her teacher at Nine Partners.
• 1821 aged ~28 Recorded as a minister by her Friends Meeting at the age of 28
• 1833 aged ~40 Helps found the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society The men's organization allowed her to attend its first convention as a guest, not a member.
• May 17, 1838 aged 45 A mob burns Pennsylvania Hall and turns toward her house A friend diverted the crowd. Mott waited in her parlor rather than leave.
• June 1840 aged 47 The World Anti-Slavery Convention in London votes to exclude its women delegates Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Charles Lenox Remond sat with the women in protest.
• 1848 aged ~55 Organizes the Seneca Falls Convention with Elizabeth Cady Stanton She opposed the resolution demanding the vote, which passed anyway.
• 1866 aged ~73 Becomes first president of the American Equal Rights Association
• November 11, 1880 aged 87 Dies of pneumonia at Roadside, aged 87 The funeral was silent until a mourner asked who could speak, since the preacher was dead.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815–1902
  Principal theorist and organizer of the nineteenth-century women’s rights and suffrage movements. co-organizer
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. ally at Seneca Falls
• William Lloyd Garrison 1805–1879
  Editor of The Liberator and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society. sat with the excluded women in London
• Susan B. Anthony 1820–1906
  Suffragist and civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. split from her association
• Alice Paul 1885–1977
  Strategist of the final campaign for women's suffrage and author of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Hicksite successor
• Harriet Tubman 1822–1913
  Abolitionist who escaped slavery and led hundreds to freedom via the Underground Railroad. sheltered by the same network