Lucretia Mott (Notable Americans)

MOTT, Lucretia, reformer, was born on Nantucket Island, Mass., Jan. 3, 1793; daughter of Capt. Thomas and Anna (Folger) Coffin ; granddaughter of Benjamin Coffin and of William Folger, and a descendant of Tristram (1642) and Dionis (Stevens) Coffin. She removed to Boston, Mass., with her parents in 1804, attended and taught in the Friends school at Nine Partners, N.Y., 1806-10, and there met James Mott (q.v.), to whom she was married at the,  home of her parents in Philadelphia, April 10, 1811. She conducted a school in Philadelphia with Rebecca Bunker, 1817- 18, and in 1818 became a minister in the Society of Friends. She eventually joined her husband, a supporter of Elias Hicks, and as a minister of the Liberal Quakers, journeyed through New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, preaching her faith and advocating the abolition of slavery. She was influential in organizing the American Anti- slavery society at Philadelphia in 1833, but being a woman could not sign the declaration adopted. She also aided in forming female anti- slavery societies, and in 1840 accompanied her husband to London, England, as a delegate from the American Antislavery society to the World's Antislavery convention to which they found, on their arrival, no women were to be admitted. She however made several addresses, and the fact that she was not recognized as a delegate led to the woman's rights movement in England, France and the United States. In 1848, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright and Mary A. McClintock, she called the first convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y., for the discussion and improvement of the social, civil and religious conditions and rights of women. She thereafter devoted herself to this cause and made her last public appearance at the Suffrage convention held in New York city in 1878. She held meetings with the colored people; was a member of the Pennsylvania Peace society, and an active worker in the Free Religious associations formed in Boston, Mass., in 1868. She also aided in establishing the Woman's Medical college in Philadelphia. See "Life and Letters of James and Lucretia Mott" by Ann Davis Hallowell (1884). She died near Philadelphia, Pa., Nov. 11, 1880.