Women were organized in activities tangential to politics and government well before the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Early-19th-century women's groups formed in Boston and New York to aid widows and orphans were more deferential and differed from the reformist groups that attempted to organize and mobilize women for political causes. The New York Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children (1797), the Boston Female Asylum (1800), and the Boston Children's Friend Society (1833) created networks among their most influential members and local politicians to gain political favors, real estate, and monetary donations. In the 1820's and 1830's more institutional, bureaucratic approaches to poverty relief emerged and new women's groups appeared in the areas of moral reform and abolition. While the early benevolence groups were discreet, private, and deferential, the newer groups were vocal, democratic, and intrusive. These new reformists were greeted with revulsion by the established powers. Women's political activities prior to Seneca Falls varied in their effect and the response they received. [G. A. Glovins]
