Lucretia Mott (1793–1880)

Lucretia Coffin was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, into a Quaker community. At age 13, she was sent to the Society of Friends boarding school in Dutchess County, New York, where she became a teacher at age 15. In 1811, she married James Mott, a fellow teacher, with whom she had six children, and the couple moved to Philadelphia. Lucretia Coffin Mott first became involved in the struggle for equal rights for women after she realized that she was paid half the wages given to male teachers for the same work. She worked closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to found the women’s rights movement in the USA, and organize the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. She and her husband also became actively engaged in the growing anti-slavery movement, and attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, although she and the other female delegates were not permitted full participation in the meeting. She maintained an active public lecture schedule, traveling to major cities in the North as well as in slave-holder states. When a strict Fugitive Slave Act was passed in the USA in 1850, Lucretia Mott and her husband used their home as a station along the "underground railroad" escape route to freedom. She remained a tireless campaigner for reform causes until her death.