Lucretia (Coffin) Mott, ca. 1860-ca. 1880. "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

Social reformer and crusader for women's rights Lucretia Coffin Mott was born on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts. In 1848, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention, which launched the organized women's rights movement in the United States. The "Declaration of Sentiments," published by Stanton, Mott and other participants prior to the meeting, was a call to arms to work for the extension of basic civil rights to women. Mott's sensitivity to women's inequality was piqued by her experience as a school teacher in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she earned half the salary of her male colleagues.

She found her talent for public speaking several years later as a grieved mother turning to her religious faith for strength after the death of a child. Both Mott and her husband were members of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia. Mott began to speak in church in 1817 and was recognized as a Quaker minister in 1821. She became a popular speaker among Friends in the Philadelphia area in the 1820s. The Quaker faith was unique among nineteenth-century denominations in its long tradition of countenancing women ministers. During the 1830s, Mott began to travel more widely and to speak against war, intemperance, and slavery. She and her husband were active participants in the abolition movement. After passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, they harbored runaway slaves at their home in Philadelphia.

In 1840, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the London meeting of the World Anti-Slavery Conference. Their sensitivity to the inequality of women was likely heightened by the exclusion of women delegates at the meeting. From 1848 until her death in 1880, Mott devoted most of her time to the women's movement, writing articles, lecturing, and attending the annual women's rights conventions. Votes for Women, 1848-1921 includes the minutes of twenty-two conventions, most of which took place during the formative decades of the movement when Mott was an active participant. Search on convention to explore this archive. The minutes of the Seneca Falls Convention contain the text of the "Declaration of Sentiments."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her daughter, Harriot, ca. 1890-ca. 1910 from a daguerreotype taken 1856. "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

The timeline One Hundred Years Toward Suffrage provides an overview of the movement. Browse the subject index of "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920 to locate more portraits of movement leaders, as well as other photographs pertaining to the history of the cause. A draft of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible is featured in Words and Deeds in American History.