Lucretia Mott Web Page by Apar Kothari
Related historical timeline created with Timeliner (Nobles grad, Tom Snyder)
Lucretia Mott was born Lucretia Coffin, on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, MA. She was a Quaker minister, abolitionist, and pioneer in the movement for womenıs rights. The Quaker community in Nantucket was a womanıs world, because among friends, men and women were considered equal. Also, the men were often away, whaling and trading, and they left religious and practical affairs in the hands of women. Lucretia Mott said that "[she] grew up so thoroughly imbued with women's rights that is was the most important question of [her] life from a very early day" (Cromwell, p. 125).
Lucretia had attended both public and private schools, in Boston, and at age 15 she began teaching as an assistant without salary, in New York. She was shocked to find out that even experienced women teachers were paid less than half of what men received. She claimed that an "impartial Creator had bestowed equality upon everyone" (Hallowell, p. 311), including women. She married James Mott in 1811, who supported her in all her causes.
In 1840, Lucretia Mott was one of the women chosen by the American Anti-Slavery Society as a delegate to go to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, in London. When she got there, she was refused recognition, and could not enter because of her sex! this greatly infuriated her, and so 8 years later, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton launched the women's rights movement. At the Convention in the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., Lucretia and Elizabeth Cady Stanton dominated the assembly. They came up with the Declaration of Sentiments, that stated that "all men and women are created equal." This document was very similar to the Declaration of independence, except that this one incorporated women's rights into it.
--Apar Kothari '99, student at Noble & Greenough School, in Dedham, MA
--history teacher: Libby Budinger
--sources: My Paper on Lucretia Mott, for US History class
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