Biography

Quaker Abolitionist, Suffragist, and Educator. Lucretia Coffin was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and raised a Quaker. Lucretia married James Mott in 1811. In 1821, the couple moved to Philadelphia, and as a Quaker minister, Lucretia began her work. Quakers differed from other religions in their equal treatment of women. Like other Quakers, Mott was active in the abolitionist movement. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had a strong anti-slavery position as early as 1758 through the work of John Woolman. Mott’s contribution to the abolition movement lay in her clear and reasoned explanation of how political advocacy could improve the position of African-Americans. She traveled widely speaking on the issue. Mott and her husband also sheltered slaves as they passed along the Underground Railroad. Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were sent as delegates to the 1840 World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London. The men controlling the convention denied them representation. Mott responded to the rejection, and adopted another concern, when she pledged to work ceaselessly for women's rights. In 1848, she and Stanton organized the first women's rights convention in the United States at Seneca Falls, New York. Later Stanton credited conversations with Mott, while seated in the segregated women's section of the convention, with the idea of the holding a women's rights convention. The list of resolutions demanded rights for women, improved educational and employment opportunities, and the vote. Her book, Discourse on Women, published in 1850 detailed the educational, economic, and political restrictions placed on women in Western Europe and America. As slavery came to a legal end throughout the United States in 1865, Mott then began the movement to register African-Americans to vote. Mott remained active in the women’s movement until her death in Abington, Pennsylvania, at the age of 87.