Lucretia Coffin Mott - Infinite Women

Born: 3 January 1793, United States
Died: 11 November 1880
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

This biography is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). It was written by Debra Michals, PhD (2015). NWHM biographies are generously supported by Susan D. Whiting. All rights reserved.

Lucretia Coffin Mott was an early feminist activist and strong advocate for ending slavery. A powerful orator, she dedicated her life to speaking out against racial and gender injustice.
Born on January 3, 1793 on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, Mott was the second of Thomas Coffin Jr.’s and Anna Folger Mott’s five children. Her father’s work as a ship’s captain kept him away from his family for long stretches and could be hazardous—so much so that he moved his family to Boston and became a merchant when Lucretia was 10 years old.
Mott was raised a Quaker, a religion that stressed equality of all people under God, and attended a Quaker boarding school in upstate New York. In 1809, the family moved to Philadelphia, and two years later, Mott married her father’s business partner, James Mott, with whom she would have six children. In 1815, her father died, saddling her mother with a mountain of debt, and Mott, her husband, and her mother joined forces to become solvent again. Mott taught school, her mother went back to running a shop, and her husband operated a textile business.
Mott, along with her supportive husband, argued ardently for the abolitionist cause as members of William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s. Garrison, who encouraged women’s participation as writers and speakers in the anti-slavery movement embraced Mott’s commitment. Mott was one of the founders of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Not everyone supported women’s public speaking. In fact, Mott was constantly criticized for behaving in ways not acceptable for women of her sex, but it did not deter her.
Mott’s stymied participation at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 brought her into contact with Elizabeth Cady Stanton with whom she formed a long and prolific collaboration. It also led Mott into the cause of women’s rights. As women, the pair were blocked from participating in the proceedings, which not only angered them, but led them to promise to hold a women’s rights convention when they returned to the United States. Eight years later, in 1848, they organized the Seneca Fall Convention, attended by hundreds of people including noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Stanton presented a “Declaration of Sentiments” at the meeting, which demanded rights for women by inserting the word “woman” into the language of the Declaration of Independence and included a list of 18 woman-specific demands. These included divorce, property and custody rights, as well as the right to vote. The latter fueled the launching of the woman suffrage movement. Mott explained that she grew up “so thoroughly imbued with women’s rights that it was the most important question” of her life. Following the convention Mott continued her crusade for women’s equality by speaking at ensuing annual women’s rights conventions and publishing Discourse on Women, a reasoned account of the history of women’s repression.
Her devotion to women’s rights did not deter her from fighting for an end to slavery. She and her husband protested the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and helped an enslaved person escape bondage a few years later. In 1866, Mott became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association. Mott joined with Stanton and Anthony in decrying the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution for granting the vote to black men but not to women. Mott was also involved with efforts to establish Swarthmore College and was instrumental in ensuring it was coeducational. Dedicated to all forms of human freedom, Mott argued as ardently for women’s rights as for black rights, including suffrage, education, and economic aid. Mott played a major role in the woman suffrage movement through her life.

The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.

MOTT, Mrs. Lucretia, reformer, born on Nantucket Island, Mass. 3rd January, 1793, and died near Philadelphia, Pa., nth November. 1880. Her father, Capt. Thomas Coffin, was a descendant of one of the original purchasers of Nantucket Island. In 1804 her parents removed to Boston, Mass. She was educated in a school in which her future husband, James Mott, was a teacher. She made rapid progress, and in her fifteenth year she began to teach in the same school In 1809 she went to Philadelphia, whither her parents had gone, and there, in 181 1, she became the wife of Mr. Mott. In 1817 she took charge of a small school in Philadelphia. In 1818 she became a minister in the Society of Friends. Her discourses were noted for clearness, refinement and eloquence. When the split occurred in the Society of Friends, in 1827. she adhered to the Hicksite party. From childhood she was interested in the movement against slavery, and she was an active worker in that cause until emancipation. In 1833 she aided to form the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. Later, she was active in forming female anti-slavery societies. In 1840 she went to London, Eng., as a delegate from the American Anti-Slavery Society to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. It was decided nut to admit women delegates, but she was cordially received and made many telling addresses. The exclusion of women from the convention led to the establishment of woman’s-rights journals in France and England, and to the movement in the United States, in which she took a leading part. She was one of the four women who, in 1848. called the convention in Seneca Falls, N. Y., and thereafter she devoted much time and effort to the agitation for improving the legal and political status of women in the United States. She was deeply interested in die welfare of the colored people, and held frequent meetings in their behalf, or several years she was president of the Pennsylvania Peace Society. During her ministerial tours in New England. New York, Pennsylvania. Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Indiana, she often denounced slavery from the pulpit. She was actively interested in the Free Religious Association movement in Boston, in 1868, and in the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia. She was the mother of several children. One of her grand-daughters, Anna Davis Hallowell, edited the “Life” of Mrs. Mott and her husband, which was published in Boston in 1884. Lucretia Mott was a slight, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, of gentle and refined manners and of great force of character. She was a pioneer woman in the cause of woman, and the women of to-day owe much of their advancement to her efforts to gain equality for the sexes in every way.

The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.

MOTT, LUCRETIA, Widely known for her philanthropy, and distinguished as a preacher among her own sect of “Friends,” or “Quakers,” is a native of the Island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Her parents were Thomas and Anna Coffin; the latter, born Folger, was related to Dr. Franklin. Lucretia was in childhood instructed to make herself useful to her mother, who, in the absence of her husband, had the charge of his mercantile affairs. In 1804, when she was about eleven years old, her parents removed to Boston, where she had the advantage of attending one of the public schools. At the age of thirteen, she was sent to a “Friends’ boarding-school,” in the State of New York, where she remained three years, during the last year being employed as an assistant teacher; which shows how great her proficiency and faithfulness must have been. Her parents had, meantime, removed to Philadelphia; there she joined them, and at the age of eighteen was married to James Mott, who also belonged to the “Society of Friends,” and subsequently entered into mercantile partnership with her father. Thus early was Mrs, Mott settled in life; and it is but justice to her to state, that she has been attentive to discharge well the womanly duties devolved on her—has been the mother of six children, five of whom are living, and do credit to their mother’s former care. She has also, in the chances and changes of an American merchant’s life, been called to help her husband in the support of their family; and she did it, as a good wife does, willingly, with her whole heart. But these duties did not engross all her time; her active mind, directed and developed by the peculiar teachings of her sect, took a wider range than has yet been usual with her sex.

Works cited by NWHM
Text from NWHM Cyber Exhibit “Rights for Women” by Kristina Gupta.
Faulkner, Carol, Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
Frederick B. Tolles, “Lucretia Mott,” in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul Boyer, editors, Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971), p. 592-595.