Lucretia Mott (Lucy)
By Taylor Armstrong
Date of Birth & the Death
Born on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Mott died in Pennsylvania in 1880.
Highlights of childhood & Education
A child of Quaker parents, Mott grew up to become a leading social reformer. At the age of 13, she attended a Quaker boarding school in New York. She stayed on and worked there as a teaching assistant. She became a member of the society’s ministry and adopted its anti-slavery views.
Entry into adulthood
While at the school, Mott met her future husband James Mott. Lucretia Mott was a women's rights activist, abolitionist, and religious reformer. The couple married in 1811 and lived in Philadelphia.
Motivations to become a reformer
When denied a seat in 1840 at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London on account of her sex, Mott preached her doctrine of female equality outside the conference hall.
What was ‘Wrong” with the world before this reform.
Women didn't have the equal rights.
What did the reformer do to make changes
Mott tried to reconcile the two factions that split the following year over the priorities of woman suffrage and Black male suffrage.
Accomplishments of the reformer
Mott, unlike many abolitionists who believed their work was done, threw herself into the cause of black suffrage and aid for freedpeople. She also helped establish a coeducational Quaker institution, Swarthmore College, in 1864. Two years later, despite increasing ill health, she was elected head of the American Equal Rights Association.
How they died remembrance today
Stone was diagnosed as suffering from advanced stomach cancer in September. She wrote final letters to friends and relatives. Having "prepared for death with serenity and an unwavering concern for the women's cause," Lucy Stone died on October 18, 1893, at the age of 75. At her funeral three days later, 1,100 people crowded the church, and hundreds more stood silently outside