Lucretia Coffin Mott was a notable nineteenth-century American feminist and social reformer. Her acts upset clergy, journalists, politicians, urban crowds, and even her own Quakers, despite her portrayal in history as a kind Quaker lady. She traveled from her home in Philadelphia with her husband, who supported her activities and gave lectures in support of abolition. In her home, she frequently housed fugitive slaves. Since the anti-slavery groups did not accept women as members, she assisted in the founding of women’s abolitionist societies. She was chosen as a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, but she soon learned that it was dominated by anti-slavery groups opposed to women speaking in public and taking action. She was the “moving spirit” of Seneca Falls’ first women’s rights convention. Her support for abolition and racial equality was never hampered by her commitment to women’s rights. She saw women’s rights as an extension of the universal ideals of liberty and equality, rather than a distinct and independent movement. Her work with white and black women in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society over a long period of time was remarkable. She, too, was a pacifist who opposed the Mexican conflict.
Childhood and Adolescence
Lucretia Coffin was born on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Anna and Thomas Coffin. She was the second of eight children. Her father was a sailor, while her mother was a shopkeeper.
Her father retired from the sea in 1803 after his ship was captured by a Spanish man-of-war and moved the family to Boston the following year, where he became a merchant.
When she was thirteen, she was transferred to the Society of Friends’ Nine Partners Quaker Boarding School in Dutchess County, New York, where she became an ardent supporter of Elias Hicks, a fiery Quaker abolitionist.
Career of Lucretia Mott
Lucretia began working as a teacher’s assistant at Nine Partners, where she was upset by the disparity in pay between male and female professors. She met James Mott, a teacher and the grandson of Nine Partners’ superintendent, here.
In 1809, the family relocated to Philadelphia, where Thomas Coffin started a business, investing his whole fortune in a factory that produced cut nails, a new product of the Industrial Revolution.
James Mott became her father’s partner and married Lucretia after boarding with the family. Her father died in 1815, leaving her mother with a large debt. The Motts had to deal with financial difficulties as well.
While James worked in his uncle’s cotton mill, sold plows, and worked as a bank clerk before entering the wholesale business, Anna Coffin returned to shopkeeping while Lucretia taught school.
James refused to buy slave products and instead traded in wool instead of cotton. Lucretia began speaking in meetings for the first time, simply but effectively, and was legally recognized as a minister in 1821.
Slavery was evil to Mott, and he refused to use slave-produced items. She became a Quaker preacher in 1821 and traveled extensively as a minister, preaching on the presence of the Divine inside each individual.
Her husband helped form the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and she later founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society with the support of other women.
She handled her home budget, extended hospitality to guests, including fleeing slaves, donated to charities, and arranged fairs to raise awareness and cash for the anti-slavery campaign despite social harassment by anti-abolitionists.
Abolitionists were divided on whether or not women should be allowed to speak in public. The General Assembly of the Congregational Worship considered it a violation of St. Paul’s command that women be silent in church.
Between 1837 and 1839, Mott attended all three national Anti-Slavery Conventions of American Women. A mob demolished Pennsylvania Hall during the convention in Philadelphia. The female delegates joined arms to securely escape the building.
The mob attacked her home, as well as Black institutions and neighborhoods in Philadelphia, in 1838. Mott sat in her parlor as a friend redirected the mob, ready to face her angry opponents.
She was one of six women delegates to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Despite complaints, American women were barred from attending and had to sit in a separate area.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an activist, liked her and the two became friends and allies. She was dubbed “Lioness of the Convention” by an Irish reporter, and she returned with fresh vigor.
She kept up her busy public speaking schedule, giving talks in important northern towns like New York and Boston, as well as slave-owning states like Baltimore, Maryland, and other places in Virginia.
She set up a meeting with slave owners to examine slavery’s morality. Her presentation was attended by 40 Congressmen in the District of Columbia, and she had a special audience with President John Tyler.
She became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, which fought for universal suffrage, after the Civil War, but resigned due to disagreements between groups led by Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
Swarthmore College was founded in 1864 by her and many other Quakers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of the first co-educational colleges in the United States, and it is still one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country.
She served as vice president of the Universal Peace Union for many years. She became president of the Pennsylvania Peace Society in 1870, a position she held until her death.
She presided over the National Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Philadelphia on July 4, 1876, the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, where she, Stanton, and Anthony demanded women’s rights.
Major Projects of Lucretia Mott
At Seneca Falls, New York, Mott and Stanton convened the first public women’s rights convention in 1848. The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments on Women’s “Right to the Electoral Franchise” was signed by Mott.
Discourse on Woman, a lecture about women’s rights, was published in 1850. She claimed that God meant for man and woman to be equal, and she backed up her claims with examples from the Old and New Testaments.
Personal History and Legacy
Lucretia Coffin married James Mott in Philadelphia’s Pine Street Meeting in 1811. They had six children together. Thomas Coffin, their second child, died at the age of two.
Mott died of pneumonia at her house in Pennsylvania and was buried in North Philadelphia’s Quaker Fairhill Burial Ground. At the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, she is memorialized in a sculpture by Pablo Picasso.
Estimated Net Worth
The estimated net worth of Lucretia Mott is unknown.
Trivia
“In a true marriage relation, the freedom of the husband and wife is equal, their dependency mutual, and their obligations reciprocal,” she says.
“It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her,” one American women’s rights champion declared.