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Sunday 21 July 2024

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON P/159

                                                                               Read Part One HERE


In this blog I focus on a woman named Elizabeth Cady Stanton.She lived from 1815 - 1902. Elizabeth was born in Johnstown, New York. She was the daughter of Margaret Livingston and Daniel Cady, Johnstown's most prominent citizens. She received her formal education at the Johnstown  Academy and at Emma Wllard's Troy Female Seminary in New York. Her father was a noted lawyer and state assemblyman and young Elizabeth gained an informal legal education by talking with him and listening to his conversations with colleagues and guests.

A well-educated woman, Elizabeth married abolitionist lecturer Henry Stanton in 1840. She, too, became active in the anti-slavery movement and worked alongside leading abolitionists of the day including Sarah and Angelina Grimle and William Lloyd Garrison, all guests at the Stanton home while they lived in Albany, New York and later Boston.

While on her honeymoon in London to attend a World's Anti-slavery convention, Elizabeth met abolitionist Lucretia Mott, who, like her, was also angry about the exclusion of women at the proceedings. Lucretia and Elizabeth, now fast friends, vowed to call a woman's right convention when they returned home. Eight years later, in 1848, Lucretia and Elizabeth held the first Woman's Right Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Elizabeth authored, "The Declaration of Sentiments," which expanded on the "Declaration of Independence" by adding the word "woman" or "women" throughout. This pivotal document called for social and legal changes to elevate woman's place in society and listed 18 grievances from the inability to control their wages and property or the difficulty in gaining custody in divorce to the lack of the right to vote. That same year Elizabeth circulated petitions throughout New York to urge the New York Congress to pass the New York Married Woman's Property Act.

P.S. I will contine my story on Elizabeth Cady Stanton in my next post.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty HERE

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