We did make one stop today at the Women's Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, NY., a place we had noted many times as we passed by on the NY Thruway, but had never taken the time to investigate. It is built around the convention of 1848, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others, held at a Methodist chapel in Seneca Falls, at which a "Declaration of Sentiments" affirming that "all men and all women are created equal" was passed. The Declaration asserted that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her," and went on to specify the inherent rights of all women, single and married, e.g., to vote, own property in their own name, and attend the college of their choice, none of which was possible at that time. There was an informative half-hour film and a great many very interesting exhibits.
It was of particular interest because Lucretia Mott had been the subject of one of Ellen's father's published books (Slavery and the "Woman Question" - Lucretia Mott's Diary of Her Visit to Great Britain to Attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 (Haverford, 1952). Mott had met Stanton at this convention and both had been outraged by the fact that the men there had debated whether even to allow them to be seated at the convention and had finally relegated them to a back bench and forbade them to speak. That humiliation led eventually to the Seneca Falls Convention eight years later.
Statues of James and Lucretia Mott
An exhibit describing Mott's and Stanton's experience at the Anti-Slavery Convention
Lucretia Mott
Mott went on to be one of the founders of Swarthmore College as a coed college in 1864.
Statues of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who authored the "Declaration," and Frederick Douglass, one of the signers.
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