Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), American abolitionist and feminist. Born on January 3, 1793, on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, Lucretia Coffin was educated at Nine Partners, a Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1811 she married James Mott, who had been a teacher at the school. After 1817 she became prominent in the Society of Friends, and in 1827, when the society split into two factions, she and her husband joined the Hicksites, the liberal faction led by Elias Hicks. In 1833 the Motts helped organize the American Antislavery Society and in 1840 they were delegates to an international antislavery convention in London. Because of her sex, Mott was excluded from the proceedings and she subsequently devoted most of her time and energy to securing equal rights for women. In 1848 she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

After the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, the Motts made their home a station of the Underground Railroad, an organization that helped blacks escape to freedom. James Mott was also instrumental in founding Swarthmore College in 1864. For the rest of her life Lucretia Mott traveled widely, attending meetings and conventions on women's rights, temperance, and the establishment of universal peace. She died at Roadside, her country house, north of Philadelphia, on November 11, 1880.

See also Woman Suffrage.