~ The Old Sachem ~ The history of women’s rights in America

By Bill Stewart

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband and the Continental Congress to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Earlier the Province of Pennsylvania (now the state of Pennsylvania) in 1718 gave women the right to own and manage property in their own name, followed by Maine in 1821. Slowly the states of early America gave women rights that only men had before. Eventually the 19th Amendment would be passed – granting women the right to vote.

I will show you the Seneca Falls Convention, then about a Massachusetts woman involved in women’s rights that you probably never heard of. The first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19, 1850. It was formed to discuss the social, civil and religious thoughts that women had to live through in early America. It was held in the Wesleyan Chapel and was held over two days.

The meeting was organized by local female Quakers and included Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The event was planned when Lucretia Mott, a Quaker in the Philadelphia area, came to Seneca Falls. The meeting had six sessions that included a lecture on law, a humorous presentation and many discussions about the role of women in society. They prepared two documents, the Declaration of Sentiments and a list of resolutions, to be debated and modified before being written for signatures.

They had a heated debate about women’s right to vote. Frederick Douglass, the only African American in attendance, argued eloquently for inclusion, and the resolution was included. One hundred of the 300 attendees signed the documents – mostly women.

Mott was a women’s right activist, abolitionist and religious reformer from Massachusetts. She was strongly opposed to slavery and a supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and his American Anti-Slavery Society. She published a book, “Discourse on Woman,” and later founded Swarthmore College.

She was born Lucretia Coffin on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, a child of Quaker parents. At 13 she attended a Quaker boarding school in New York State and eventually she became a teaching assistant. She met her future husband, James Mott, at the school, and they married in 1811. In 1821 Lucretia became a Quaker minister in Philadelphia.

She and her husband became members of the Society of Friends, and she identified increasingly with more liberal and progressive trends in American religious life, and formed the Free Religious Association in Boston in 1867. She died on November 11, 1880, in Chilton Hills, which is now a part of Philadelphia.

Women’s rights continues to this day with Hillary Clinton before (2016) and Kamala Harris now as candidates for the Presidency.

  (Editor’s Note: Bill Stewart, who is better known to Saugus Advocate readers as “The Old Sachem,” writes a weekly column – sometimes about sports. He also opines on current or historical events or famous people.)