Lucretia Mott



Lucretia Coffin Mott was born on January 3, 1793, to Quaker parents in Nantucket, Massachusetts. When she was 13, her parents decided to send her to a co-ed school in New York. She ended up meeting her future husband, James Mott at this school. From 1808 to 1810, Lucretia got the job as an assistant teacher at Nine Partners school. During this time, her family moved to Philadelphia, where she would live for the rest of her life.

James married Lucretia in 1811. He worked in the cotton and wool industry, but later concentrated on wool because of the slavery issues with cotton. Between the years of 1812 to 1828, Lucretia and James had six children. Lucretia started becoming a public speaker at Quaker meeting in 1818, and in 1821 she became a minister in the Society of Friends in Philadelphia. James Mott, being the traditional Quaker that he was, supported his wife in all that she became involved in; and in the 1830s Lucretia was elected as a clerk of the Philadelphia Women's Yearly Meeting. During the 1820s a rival formed between the conservative Quakers and the Hicksites, which were, in a sense, more liberal Quakers. In 1827, Lucretia and James followed the Hicksites where they spoke of the bible in a more lenient way than the conservatives saw it. Lucretia addressed various reform organizations such as, the Non-Resistance Society, the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women as yearly Quaker meetings. She was known as a 'forceful, yet intelligent' woman.

Lucretia's made her only trip in 1840. She was one of six chosen women delegates from the several American antislavery societies to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. She and James Mott sailed for England on May 5. On June 12, she and the other women delegates were refused seats, despite the protest of other Americans attending the convention. At this conference, Lucretia met Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

In 1848, people saw the birth of the women's rights movement in the historic Seneca Falls Convention which issued the women's Declaration of Sentiments, a call for equal treatment of women. Lucretia took charge over the meeting and was the first to sign the declaration.

Throughout the 1850s, Lucretia continued speaking