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Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) was an American
orator An orator, or oratist, is a public speaker, especially one who is eloquent or skilled. Etymology Recorded in English c. 1374, with a meaning of "one who pleads or argues for a cause", from Anglo-French ''oratour'', Old French ''orateur'' (14th ...
,
abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...
and
suffragist Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
who was a vocal advocate for and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery. Stone was known for using her birth name after
marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...
, contrary to the custom of women taking their husband's surname. Stone's organizational activities for the cause of women's rights yielded tangible gains in the difficult political environment of the 19th century. Stone helped initiate the first
National Women's Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Convention ...
in Worcester, Massachusetts and she supported and sustained it annually, along with a number of other local, state and regional activist conventions. Stone spoke in front of a number of legislative bodies to promote laws giving more rights to women. She assisted in establishing the Woman's National Loyal League to help pass the Thirteenth Amendment and thereby abolish slavery, after which she helped form the
American Woman Suffrage Association The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was a single-issue national organization formed in 1869 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. The AWSA lobbied state governments to enact laws granting or expanding women's right to vote ...
(AWSA), which built support for a woman suffrage Constitutional amendment by winning woman suffrage at the state and local levels. Stone wrote extensively about a wide range of women's rights, publishing and distributing speeches by herself and others, and convention proceedings. In the long-running and influential ''
Woman's Journal ''Woman's Journal'' was an American women's rights periodical published from 1870 to 1931. It was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. In 1917 it was purchased by ...
'', a weekly periodical that she founded and promoted, Stone aired both her own and differing views about women's rights. Called "the orator",Spender, 1982, p. 348. the "morning star" and the "heart and soul" of the women's rights movement, Stone influenced
Susan B. Anthony Susan B. Anthony (born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to s ...
to take up the cause of women's suffrage.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca ...
wrote that "Lucy Stone was the first person by whom the heart of the American public was deeply stirred on
the woman question "The woman question", which is translated from the French term ''querelle des femmes'' (literally, "dispute of women"), refers both in historiography to an intellectual debate from the 1400s to the 1700s on the nature of women and feminist campai ...
." Together, Anthony, Stanton, and Stone have been called the 19th-century "
triumvirate A triumvirate ( la, triumvirātus) or a triarchy is a political institution ruled or dominated by three individuals, known as triumvirs ( la, triumviri). The arrangement can be formal or informal. Though the three leaders in a triumvirate are ...
" of women's suffrage and
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
.Library of Congress. American Memory. American Women, Manuscript Division
''Women's Suffrage: The Early Leaders''.
Retrieved on May 13, 2009.


Early life and influences

Lucy Stone was born on August 13, 1818, on her family's farm at Coy's Hill in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. She was the eighth of nine children born to Hannah Matthews and Francis Stone; she grew up with three brothers and three sisters, two siblings having died before her own birth. Another member of the Stone household was Sarah Barr, "Aunt Sally" to the children – a sister of Francis Stone who had been abandoned by her husband and left dependent upon her brother. Although farm life was hard work for all and Francis Stone tightly managed the family resources, Lucy remembered her childhood as one of "opulence", the farm producing all the food the family wanted and enough extra to trade for the few store-bought goods they needed. When Stone recalled that "There was only one will in our family, and that was my father's", she described the family government characteristic of her day. Hannah Stone earned a modest income through selling eggs and cheese but was denied any control over that money, sometimes denied money to purchase things Francis considered trivial. Believing she had a right to her own earnings, Hannah sometimes stole coins from his purse or secretly sold a cheese. As a child, Lucy resented instances of what she saw as her father's unfair management of the family's money. But she later came to realize that custom was to blame, and the injustice only demonstrated "the necessity of making custom right, if it must rule." From the examples of her mother, Aunt Sally, and a neighbor neglected by her husband and left destitute, Stone early learned that women were at the mercy of their husbands' good will. When she came across the biblical passage, "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee", she was distraught over what appeared to be divine sanction of women's subjugation, but then reasoned that the injunction applied only to wives. Resolving to "call no man my master", she determined to keep control over her own life by never marrying, obtaining the highest education she could, and earning her own livelihood. Her biographer Andrea Moore Kerr writes, "Stone's personality was striking: her unquestioning willingness to take responsibility for other people's actions; her 'workaholic' habits; her self doubt; her desire for control."


Teaching at "a woman's pay"

At age 16, Stone began teaching in district schools, as her brothers and sister, Rhoda, also did. Her beginning pay of $1.00 a day was much lower than that of male teachers, and when she substituted for her brother, Bowman, one winter, she received less pay than he received. When she protested to the school committee that she had taught all the subjects Bowman had, it replied that they could give her "only a woman's pay." Lower pay for women was one of the arguments cited by those promoting the hiring of women as teachers: "To make education universal, it must be at moderate expense, and women can afford to teach for one-half, or even less, the salary which men would ask." Although Stone's salary increased along with the size of her schools, until she finally received $16 a month, it was always lower than the male rate.


The "woman question"

In 1836, Stone began reading newspaper reports of a controversy raging throughout Massachusetts that some referred to as the "woman question" – what was woman's proper role in society; should she assume an active and public role in the reform movements of the day? Developments within that controversy over the next several years shaped her evolving philosophy on women's rights. A debate over whether women were entitled to a political voice had begun when many women responded to
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read antislavery newspaper '' The Liberator'', which he fo ...
's appeal to circulate antislavery petitions and sent thousands of signatures to Congress only to have them rejected, in part because women had sent them. Women abolitionists responded by holding a convention in New York City to expand their petitioning efforts, and declaring that "as certain rights and duties are common to all moral beings", they would no longer remain within limits prescribed by "corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture." After sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké began speaking to audiences of men and women, instead of women-only groups, as was acceptable, a state convention of Congregational ministers issued a pastoral letter condemning women's assuming "the place of man as a public reformer" and "itinerat ngin the character of public lecturers and teachers." Stone attended the convention as a spectator, and was so angered by the letter that she determined "if ever had anything to say in public, would say it, and all the more because of that pastoral letter." Stone read
Sarah Grimké Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a ...
's "Letters on the Province of Woman" (later republished as "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes"), and told a brother they only reinforced her resolve "to call no man master." She drew from these "Letters" when writing college essays and her later women's rights lectures. Having determined to obtain the highest education she could, Stone enrolled at
Mount Holyoke Mount Holyoke, a traprock mountain, elevation , is the westernmost peak of the Holyoke Range and part of the 100-mile (160 km) Metacomet Ridge. The mountain is located in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts, and is the ...
Female Seminary in 1839, at the age of 21. But she was so disappointed in
Mary Lyon Mary Mason Lyon (; February 28, 1797 – March 5, 1849) was an American pioneer in women's education. She established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, (now Wheaton College) in 1834. She then established Mount Holyoke Femal ...
's intolerance of antislavery and women's rights that she withdrew after only one term. The very next month she enrolled at Wesleyan Academy (later
Wilbraham & Monson Academy Wilbraham & Monson Academy (WMA) is a college-preparatory school located in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1804, it is a four-year boarding and day high school for students in Grades 9-12 and postgraduate. A middle school, with Grades 6– ...
), which she found more to her liking: "It was decided by a large majority in our literary society the other day," she reported to a brother "that ladies ought to mingle in politics, go to Congress, etc. etc." Stone read a newspaper account of how a Connecticut antislavery meeting had denied the right to speak or vote to
Abby Kelley Abby Kelley Foster (January 15, 1811 – January 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist and radical social reformer active from the 1830s to 1870s. She became a fundraiser, lecturer and committee organizer for the influential American Anti-Sla ...
, recently hired as an antislavery agent to work in that state. Refusing to relinquish her right, Kelley had defiantly raised her hand every time a vote was taken. "I admire the calm and noble bearing of Abby K," Stone wrote to a brother, "and cannot but wish there were more kindred spirits." Three years later, Stone followed Kelley's example. In 1843, a deacon was expelled from Stone's church for his antislavery activities, which included supporting Kelley by hosting her at his home and driving her to lectures that she gave in the vicinity. When the first vote for expulsion was taken, Stone raised her hand in his defense. The minister discounted her vote, saying that, though she was a member of the church, she was not a voting member. Like Kelley, she stubbornly raised her hand for each of the remaining five votes. After completing a year at coeducational Monson Academy in the summer of 1841, Stone learned that Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio had become the first college in the nation to admit women and had bestowed college degrees on three women. Stone enrolled at Quaboag Seminary in neighboring Warren, where she read
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
and
Sophocles Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...
and studied
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
and
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
grammar in preparation for Oberlin's entrance examinations.


Oberlin

In August 1843, just after she turned 25, Stone traveled by train, steamship, and stagecoach to
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of highe ...
in Ohio, the country's first college to admit both women and
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s. She entered the college believing that women should vote and assume political office, that women should study the classic professions, and that women should be able to speak their minds in a public forum. Oberlin College did not share all of these sentiments. In her third year at Oberlin, Stone befriended Antoinette Brown, an abolitionist and suffragist who came to Oberlin in 1845 to study to become a minister. Stone and Brown would eventually marry abolitionist brothers and thus become sisters-in-law.


Equal pay strike

Stone hoped to earn most of her college expenses through teaching in one of the institute's lower departments. But because of its policy against employing first-year students as teachers, the only work Stone could get other than teaching at district schools during the winter break was housekeeping chores through the school's manual labor program. For this, she was paid three cents an hour—less than half what male students received for their work in the program. Among measures taken to reduce her expenses, Stone prepared her own meals in her dormitory room. In 1844 Stone was given a position teaching arithmetic in the Ladies Department, but again received reduced pay because of her sex. Oberlin's compensation policies required Stone to do twice the labor a male student had to do to pay the same costs. Stone frequently rose at two o'clock to fit in work and study, and she found her health declining. In February 1845, having decided to submit to the injustice no longer, she asked the Faculty Board for the same pay given two lesser-experienced male colleagues. When her request was denied, she resigned her position. Pleading with the faculty to restore Stone, her former students said they would pay Stone "what was right" if the college would not. Stone had planned to borrow money from her father when funds ran out, but Francis Stone, moved by his daughter's description of her struggles, promised to provide money when needed. Help from home was not needed, however, because after three months of pressure, the faculty yielded and hired Stone back, paying both her and other women student teachers at the same rate paid male student teachers.


Public speaking

In February 1846, Stone intimated to Abby Kelley Foster that she was thinking of becoming a public speaker, but not until the following summer did a storm of controversy over Foster's speaking at Oberlin decide the matter for her. Faculty opposition to Foster ignited impassioned discussion of women's rights among the students, especially of a woman's right to speak in public, which Stone vigorously defended in a joint meeting of the men's and women's literary societies. She followed that campus demonstration by making her first public speech at Oberlin's August 1 commemoration of Emancipation in the West Indies. In the fall of 1846, Stone informed her family of her intention to become a women's rights lecturer. Her brothers were at once supportive, her father encouraged her to do what she considered her duty, but her mother and only remaining sister begged her to reconsider. To her mother's fears that she would be reviled, Stone said she knew she would be disesteemed and even hated, but she must "pursue that course of conduct which, to me, appears best calculated to promote the highest good of the world." Stone then tried to gain practical speaking experience. Although women students could debate each other in their literary society, it was considered inappropriate for them to participate in oral exercises with men; women members of the collegiate rhetoric class were expected to learn by observing their male classmates. So Stone and first-year student Antoinette Brown, who also wanted to develop skill in public speaking, organized an off-campus women's debating club. After gaining a measure of competence, they sought and received permission to debate each other before Stone's rhetoric class. The debate attracted a large student audience as well as attention from the Faculty Board, which thereupon formally banned women's oral exercises in coeducational classes. Shortly thereafter, Stone accepted a challenge from a former editor of a county newspaper to a public debate on women's rights, and she soundly defeated him. She then submitted a petition to the Faculty Board, signed by most members of her graduating class, asking that women chosen to write graduation essays be permitted to read them themselves, as men so honored did, instead of having them read by faculty members. When the Faculty Board refused and Stone was elected to write an essay, she declined, saying she could not support a principle that denied women "the privilege of being co-laborers with men in any sphere to which their ability makes them adequate." Stone received her baccalaureate degree from Oberlin College on August 25, 1847, becoming the first female college graduate from Massachusetts.


Antislavery apprenticeship

Stone gave her first public speeches on women's rights in the fall of 1847, first at her brother Bowman's church in
Gardner, Massachusetts Gardner, officially the City of Gardner, is a city in Worcester County in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. The population was 21,287 in the 2020 census. Gardner is home of such sites as the Blue Moon Diner, Dunn State Park, G ...
, and a little later in Warren. Stone became a lecturing agent for the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, headquartered in Boston, was organized as an auxiliary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. Its roots were in the New England Anti-Slavery Society, organized by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of ' ...
in June 1848, persuaded by Abby Kelley Foster that the experience would give her the speaking practice she still felt she needed before beginning her women's rights campaign. Stone immediately proved to be an effective speaker, reported to wield extraordinary persuasive power over her audiences. She was described as "a little meek-looking Quakerish body, with the sweetest, modest manners and yet as unshrinking and self-possessed as a loaded cannon." One of her assets, in addition to a storytelling ability that could move audiences to tears or laughter as she willed, was said to be an unusual voice that contemporaries compared to a "silver bell", and of which it was said, "no more perfect instrument had ever been bestowed upon a speaker." In addition to helping Stone develop as an orator, the antislavery agency introduced her to a network of progressive reformers within the Garrisonian wing of the abolition movement who assisted her women's rights work. In the fall of 1848, she received an invitation from Phoebe Hathaway of Farmington, New York, to lecture for the women who had organized the Seneca Falls women's rights convention and the Rochester women's rights convention earlier that summer. These rights conventions provided continuity for the woman's rights movement, even though no official organization was actually formed prior to the Civil War. Most of the well-known leaders at the time attended these conventions, except for those who were ill or sick. The best-known of them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone, met, and worked together harmoniously as they wrote, discussed, and circulated petitions for the woman's rights movement. Although Stone accepted and expected to begin working for them in the fall of 1849, the agency never materialized. In April 1849, Stone was invited to lecture for the
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) was founded in December 1833 and dissolved in March 1870 following the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It was founded by eighteen women, including Mary ...
, and
Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (''née'' Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongs ...
took advantage of her presence to hold Pennsylvania's first women's rights meeting on May 4, 1849. With the help of abolitionists, Stone conducted Massachusetts' first petition campaigns for the right of women to vote and hold public office. Wendell Phillips drafted the first petitions and accompanying appeals for circulation, and William Lloyd Garrison published them in ''The Liberator'' for readers to copy and circulate. When Stone sent petitions to the legislature in February 1850, over half were from towns where she had lectured.


National Woman's Rights Convention

In April 1850, the Ohio Women's Convention met in Salem, Ohio, a few weeks before a state convention met to revise the Ohio state constitution. The women's convention sent a communication to the constitutional convention requesting that the new constitution secure the same political and legal rights for women that were guaranteed to men. Stone sent a letter praising their initiative and said, "Massachusetts ought to have taken the lead in the work you are now doing, but if she chooses to linger, let her young sisters of the West set her a worthy example; and if the 'Pilgrim spirit is not dead,' we'll pledge Massachusetts to follow her." Some of the leaders asked Stone and Lucretia Mott to address the constitutional convention on their behalf, but believing such appeals should come from residents of the state, they declined. Women's rights conventions up to this point had been organized on a regional or state basis. During the annual convention of the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS; 1833–1870) was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this socie ...
in Boston in 1850, with the support of Garrison and other abolitionists, Stone and
Paulina Wright Davis Paulina Wright Davis ( Kellogg; August 7, 1813 – August 24, 1876) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, and educator. She was one of the founders of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. Early life Davis was born in Bloomfield, Ne ...
posted a notice for a meeting to consider the possibility of organizing a women's rights convention on a national basis. The meeting was held at Boston's Melodeon Hall on May 30, 1850. Davis presided while Stone presented the proposal to the large and responsive audience and served as secretary. Seven women were appointed to organize the convention, with Davis and Stone assigned to conduct the correspondence needed to solicit signatures to the call and recruit speakers and attendance. A few months before the convention, Stone contracted typhoid fever while traveling in Indiana and nearly died. The protracted nature of Stone's illness left Davis as the principal organizer of the first
National Women's Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Convention ...
, which met on October 23–24, 1850, in Brinley Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, with an attendance of about a thousand. Stone was able to attend the Worcester convention, but frail health limited her participation, and she made no formal address until the closing session. The convention decided not to establish a formal association but to exist as an annual convention with a standing committee to arrange its meetings, publish its proceedings, and execute adopted plans of action. Stone was appointed to the Central Committee of nine women and nine men. The following spring, she became secretary of the committee and, except for one year, retained that position until 1858. As secretary, Stone took a leading part in organizing and setting the agenda for the national conventions throughout the decade.


Woman's rights orator

In May 1851, while in Boston attending the New England Anti-Slavery Society's annual meeting, Stone went to the exhibit of
Hiram Powers Hiram Powers (July 29, 1805 – June 27, 1873) was an American neoclassical sculptor. He was one of the first 19th-century American artists to gain an international reputation, largely based on his famous marble sculpture ''The Greek Slave''. ...
's statue '' The Greek Slave''. She was so moved by the sculpture that when she addressed the meeting that evening, she poured out her heart about the statue being emblematic of all enchained womanhood. Stone said the society's general agent, Samuel May, Jr., reproached her for speaking on women's rights at an antislavery meeting, and she replied, "I was a woman before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for women." Three months later, Stone notified May that she intended to lecture on women's rights full-time and would not be available for antislavery work.Million, 2003, p. 112. Stone launched her career as an independent women's rights lecturer on October 1, 1851. When May continued to press antislavery work upon her, she agreed to lecture for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on Sundays. Arranging women's rights lectures around these engagements, she used pay for her antislavery work to defray expenses of her independent lecturing until she felt confident enough to charge admission.


Dress reform

When Stone resumed lecturing in the fall of 1851, she wore a new style of dress that she had adopted during her winter convalescence, consisting of a loose, short jacket and a pair of baggy trousers under a skirt that fell a few inches below the knees. The dress was a product of the health-reform movement and intended to replace the fashionable French dress of a tight bodice over a whalebone-fitted corset, and a skirt that dragged several inches on the floor, worn over several layers of starched petticoats with straw or horsehair sewn into the hems. Ever since the fall of 1849, when the ''Water-Cure Journal'' urged women to invent a style of dress that would allow them to use their legs freely, women across the country had been wearing some form of pants and short skirt, generally called the "Turkish costume" or the "American dress." Most wore it as a walking or gardening dress, but a letter writer to the National Woman's Rights Convention urged women to adopt it as common attire. By the spring of 1851, women in several states were wearing the dress in public. In March,
Amelia Bloomer Amelia Jenks Bloomer (May 27, 1818 – December 30, 1894) was an American newspaper editor, women's rights and temperance advocate. Even though she did not create the women's clothing reform style known as bloomers, her name became associat ...
, editor of the temperance newspaper ''The Lily,'' announced that she was wearing it and printed a description of her dress along with instructions on how to make it. Soon, newspapers had dubbed it the Bloomer dress, and the name stuck. The Bloomer became a fashion fad during the following months, as women from Toledo to New York City and Lowell, Massachusetts, held reform-dress social events and festivals. Supporters gathered signatures to a "Declaration of Independence from the Despotism of Parisian Fashion" and organized dress-reform societies. A few Garrisonian supporters of women's rights took prominent part in these activities, and one offered silk to any of his friends who would make it into a short skirt and trousers for a public dress. Stone accepted the offer.Million, 2003, p. 115. When Stone lectured in the dress in the fall of 1851, hers was the first Bloomer most of her audiences had ever seen. But by then, the dress had become controversial. Although newspapers had initially praised the practicality of the new style, they soon turned to ridicule and condemnation, now viewing the trousers as a usurpation of the symbol of male authority. Many women retreated in the face of criticism, but Stone continued to wear the short dress exclusively for the next three years. She also wore her hair short, cut just below her jaw line. After Stone lectured in New York City in April 1853, the report of her speeches in the ''Illustrated News'' was accompanied by this engraving of Stone in the Bloomer dress. Stone found the short skirt convenient during her travels and defended it against those who said it was a distraction that hurt the women's rights cause. Nevertheless, she disliked the instant attention it drew whenever she arrived in a new place. In the fall of 1854, she added a dress a few inches longer, for occasional use. In 1855, she abandoned the dress altogether and was not involved in the formation of a National Dress Reform Association in February 1856. Her resumption of long skirts drew the condemnation of such dress-reform leaders as Gerrit Smith and Lydia Sayer Hasbrouk, who accused her of sacrificing principle for the sake of pleasing a husband.


Expulsion from church

Stone's anti-slavery work included harsh criticism of churches that refused to condemn slavery. Her own church in West Brookfield, the First Congregational Church of West Brookfield, was one of those, having expelled a deacon for anti-slavery activities. In 1851, the church expelled Stone herself. Stone had already moved significantly away from that church's Trinitarian doctrines. While at Oberlin, Stone had arranged for her friend Abby Kelley Foster and her new husband,
Stephen Symonds Foster Stephen Symonds Foster (November 17, 1809 – September 13, 1881) was a radical American abolitionist known for his dramatic and aggressive style of public speaking, and for his stance against those in the church who failed to fight slavery. His ma ...
, to speak there on the abolition of slavery. Afterwards,
Charles Finney Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Old Revivalism." Finney rejected much of tr ...
, a prominent professor of theology at Oberlin, denounced the Fosters for their Unitarian beliefs. Intrigued, Stone began to engage in classroom discussions about the Trinitarian-Unitarian controversy and ultimately decided that she was a Unitarian. Expelled from her childhood church, she affiliated with the Unitarian church.


Issues of divorce

Before her own marriage, Stone felt that women should be allowed to divorce drunken husbands, to formally end a "loveless marriage" so that "a true love may grow up in the soul of the injured one from the full enjoyment of which no legal bond had a right to keep herKerr, 1992, p. 156. ...Whatever is pure and holy, not only has a right to be, but it has a right also to be recognized, and further, I think it has no right not to be recognized."Hays, 1961, p. 169. Stone's friends often felt differently about the issue; "Nettee" Brown wrote to Stone in 1853 that she was not ready to accept the idea, even if both parties wanted divorce. Stanton was less inclined to clerical orthodoxy; she was very much in favor of giving women the right to divorce, eventually coming to the view that the reform of marriage laws was more important than women's voting rights. In the process of planning for women's rights conventions, Stone worked against Stanton to remove from any proposed platform the formal advocacy of divorce. Stone wished to keep the subject separate, to prevent the appearance of moral laxity.Kerr, 1992, p. 72. She pushed "for the right of woman to the control of her own person as a moral, intelligent, accountable being." Other rights were certain to fall into place after women were given control of their own bodies. Years later, Stone's position on divorce would change.


Differences with Douglass

In 1853, Stone drew large audiences with a lecture tour through several southern states. Former slave
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...
rebuked her in his abolitionist newspaper, accusing her of achieving success by putting her anti-slavery principles aside and speaking only of women's rights. Douglass later found Stone at fault for speaking at a whites-only Philadelphia lecture hall, but Stone insisted that she had replaced her planned speech that day with an appeal to the audience to boycott the facility. It took years before the two were reconciled.


Western tour

On October 14, 1853, following the National Woman's Rights Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, Stone and Lucretia Mott addressed Cincinnati's first women's rights meeting, arranged by Henry Blackwell, a local businessman from a family of capable women, who had taken an interest in Stone. After that successful meeting, Stone accepted Blackwell's offer to arrange a lecture tour for her in the western states – considered then to be those west of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Over the following thirteen weeks, Stone gave over forty lectures in thirteen cities, during which a report to the ''New York Tribune'' said she was stirring the West on women's rights "as it is seldom stirred on any subject whatsoever." After four lectures in Louisville, Stone was begged to repeat the entire course and told she was having more effect there than she could have anywhere else. An Indianapolis newspaper reported that Stone "set about two-thirds of the women in the town crazy after women's rights and placed half the men in a similar predicament." St. Louis papers said her lectures attracted the largest crowds ever assembled there, filling the city's largest auditorium beyond its capacity of two thousand. Chicago papers praised her lectures as the best of the season, and said they were inspiring discussion and debate in the city's homes and meeting places. When Stone headed home in January 1854, she left behind incalculable influence. From 1854 through 1858, Stone lectured on women's rights in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario. Elizabeth Cady Stanton would later write that "Lucy Stone was the first speaker who really stirred the nation's heart on the subject of woman's wrongs."


Petitioning and hearings

In addition to being the women's rights movement's most prominent spokesperson, Lucy Stone led the movement's petitioning efforts. She initiated petition efforts in New England and several other states and assisted the petitioning efforts of state and local organizations in New York, Ohio, and Indiana.


Massachusetts

After petitioning the Massachusetts legislature from 1849 through 1852 for the right of women to vote and serve in public office, Stone aimed her 1853 petitions at the convention that would meet on May 4, 1853, to revise the state constitution. Wendell Phillips drafted both the petition asking that the word "male" be stricken wherever it appeared in the constitution, and an appeal urging Massachusetts citizens to sign it. After canvassing the state for nine months, Stone sent the convention petitions bearing over five thousand signatures. On May 27, 1853, Stone and Phillips addressed the convention's Committee on Qualifications of Voters. In reporting Stone's hearing, the ''Liberator'' noted: "Never before, since the world was made, in any country, has woman publicly made her demand in the hall of legislation to be represented in her own person, and to have an equal part in framing the laws and determining the action of government."


Multi-state campaigns

Stone called a New England Woman's Rights Convention in Boston on June 2, 1854, to expand her petitioning efforts. The convention adopted her resolution for petitioning all six New England legislatures, as well as her proposed form of petition, and it appointed a committee in each state to organize the work. In a speech before the second New England Woman's Rights Convention, held in June 1855, Stone urged that one reason women needed suffrage was to protect any gains achieved, reminding them that "the next Legislature may undo all that the last have done for women." The convention adopted a resolution calling the ballot "woman's sword and shield; the means of achieving and protecting all other civil rights" and another urging the national convention to make suffrage petitioning its priority. The next National Woman's Rights Convention met in Cincinnati on October 17 and 18, 1855. It was here that Stone delivered impromptu remarks that became famous as her "disappointment" speech. When a heckler interrupted the proceedings, calling female speakers "a few disappointed women", Stone retorted that yes, she was indeed a "disappointed woman." "In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer."McMillen, 2008, p. 111. The convention adopted Stone's resolution calling for the circulation of petitions and saying it was "the duty of women in their respective States to ask the legislators for the elective franchise." Following the convention, suffrage petitioning took place in the New England states, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska, with resultant legislative hearings or action in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Amelia Bloomer, recently moved to Iowa near the Nebraska border, took up the work in that area, while the Indiana Woman's Rights Society, at least one of whose officers was at the Cincinnati convention, directed the work in Indiana. Stone had helped launch the New York campaign at a state woman's rights convention in Saratoga Springs in August, and at the Cleveland convention recruited workers for it, as well as for the work in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Stone took charge of the work in Ohio, her new home state, drafting its petition, placing it in Ohio newspapers and circulating it during lectures across southern Ohio while her recruit worked in the northern part of the state. Stone also lectured in Illinois and Indiana in support of the petition drives there and personally introduced the work in Wisconsin, where she found volunteers to circulate the petition and legislators to introduce them in both houses of the legislature. At the national convention of 1856, Stone presented a new strategy suggested by
Antoinette Brown Blackwell Antoinette Louisa Brown, later Antoinette Brown Blackwell (May 20, 1825 – November 5, 1921), was the first woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister in the United States. She was a well-versed public speaker on the paramount iss ...
to send a memorial to the various state legislatures signed by the officers of the National Woman's Rights Convention. Antoinette Brown had married
Samuel Charles Blackwell Samuel Charles Blackwell (1823–1901) was an Anglo-American abolitionist. Biography Blackwell was born in England, the son of Bristol sugar refiner Samuel Blackwell (c. 1790–August 7, 1838) and Hannah Lane, who moved their family of eight chil ...
on January 24, 1856, becoming Stone's sister-in-law in the process.Lasser, 1987, p. 147. Stone, Brown Blackwell, and Ernestine Rose were appointed a committee to carry out the plan. Stone drafted and printed the appeal, and Brown Blackwell mailed it to twenty-five state legislatures. Indiana and Pennsylvania referred the memorial to select committees, while both Massachusetts and Maine granted hearings. On March 6, 1857, Stone, Wendell Phillips and
James Freeman Clarke James Freeman Clarke (April 4, 1810 – June 8, 1888) was an American minister, theologian and author. Biography Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on April 4, 1810, James Freeman Clarke was the son of Samuel Clarke and Rebecca Parker Hull, though ...
addressed the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts senate, and on March 10, Stone and Phillips addressed a select committee of the Maine legislature. On July 4, 1856, in
Viroqua, Wisconsin Viroqua is the county seat of Vernon County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 4,504 at the 2020 census. The city is in the town of Viroqua. Etymology The town was originally named “Farwell” after Leonard J. Farwell, second Gov ...
, Stone gave the first women's rights and anti-slavery speech delivered by a woman in the area.


Tax protest

In January 1858, Stone staged a highly publicized protest that took the issue of taxation without representation across the nation. The previous summer she and Blackwell had purchased a house in Orange, New Jersey, and when the first tax bill came, Stone returned it unpaid with the explanation that taxing women while denying them the right to vote was a violation of America's founding principles. On January 22, 1858, the city auctioned some of her household goods to pay the tax and attendant court costs. The following month, Stone and Blackwell spoke on taxation without representation before two large meetings in Orange, and circulated petitions asking the New Jersey legislature for woman's suffrage. Stone's protest inspired other tax-paying women to action: some followed her example and refused to pay taxes, with one case reaching the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1863, while others went to the polls to demand their right as taxpayers to vote.


Marriage

Henry Blackwell began a two-year courtship of Stone in the summer of 1853. Stone told him she did not wish to marry because she did not want to surrender control over her life and would not assume the legal position occupied by a married woman. Blackwell maintained that despite the law, couples could create a marriage of equal partnership, governed by their mutual agreement. They could also take steps to protect the wife against unjust laws, such as placing her assets in the hands of a trustee. He also believed that marriage would allow each partner to accomplish more than he or she could alone, and to show how he could help advance Stone's work, he arranged her highly successful western lecturing tour of 1853. Over an eighteen-month courtship conducted primarily through correspondence, Stone and Blackwell discussed the nature of marriage, actual and ideal, as well as their own natures and suitability for marriage. Stone gradually fell in love and in November 1854 agreed to marry Blackwell. Stone and Blackwell developed a private agreement aimed at preserving and protecting Stone's financial independence and personal liberty. In monetary matters, they agreed that the marriage be like a business partnership, with the partners being "joint proprietors of everything except the results of previous labors." Neither would have claim to lands belonging to the other, nor any obligation for the other's costs of holding them. While married and living together they would share earnings, but if they should separate, they would relinquish claim to the other's subsequent earnings. Each would have the right to will their property to whomever they pleased unless they had children. Over Blackwell's objections, Stone refused to be supported and insisted on paying half of their mutual expenses. In addition to financial independence, Stone and Blackwell agreed that each would enjoy personal independence and autonomy: "Neither partner shall attempt to fix the residence, employment, or habits of the other, nor shall either partner feel bound to live together any longer than is agreeable to both." During their discussion of marriage, Stone had given Blackwell a copy of Henry C. Wright's book ''Marriage and Parentage; Or, The Reproductive Element in Man, as a Means to His Elevation and Happiness,'' and asked him to accept its principles as what she considered the relationship between husband and wife should be. Wright proposed that because women bore the results of sexual intercourse, wives should govern a couple's marital relations. In accordance with that view, Blackwell agreed that Stone would choose "when, where and how often" she would "become a mother." In addition to this private agreement, Blackwell drew up a protest of laws, rules, and customs that conferred superior rights on husbands and, as part of the wedding ceremony, pledged never to avail himself of those laws. The wedding took place at Stone's home in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on May 1, 1855, with Stone's close friend and co-worker Thomas Wentworth Higginson officiating. Higginson sent a copy of Stone and Blackwell's Protest to the ''
Worcester Spy The ''Worcester Spy'', originally known as the ''Massachusetts Spy'' was a newspaper founded in 1770 in Boston, Massachusetts by Isaiah Thomas, dedicated to supporting the Revolutionary cause against the British. In the 19th century, it became a ...
'', and from there it spread across the country. While some commentators viewed it as a protest against marriage itself, others agreed that no woman should resign her legal existence without such formal protest against the despotism that forced her to forgo marriage and motherhood or submit to the degradation in which law placed a married woman. It inspired other couples to make similar protests part of their wedding ceremonies.


Keeping her name

Stone viewed the tradition of wives abandoning their own surname to assume that of their husbands as a manifestation of the legal annihilation of a married woman's identity. Immediately after her marriage, with the agreement of her husband, she continued to sign correspondence as "Lucy Stone" or "Lucy Stone – only." But during the summer, Blackwell tried to register the deed for property Stone purchased in Wisconsin, and the registrar insisted she sign it as "Lucy Stone Blackwell." The couple consulted Blackwell's friend,
Salmon P. Chase Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth chief justice of the United States. He also served as the 23rd governor of Ohio, represented Ohio in the United States Senate, a ...
, a Cincinnati lawyer and future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who was not immediately able to answer their question about the legality of her name. So while continuing to sign her name as Lucy Stone in private correspondence, for eight months she signed her name as Lucy Stone Blackwell on public documents and allowed herself to be so identified in convention proceedings and newspaper reports. But upon receiving assurance from Chase that no law required a married woman to change her name, Stone made a public announcement at the May 7, 1856, convention of the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS; 1833–1870) was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this socie ...
in Boston that her name remained Lucy Stone. In 1879, when Boston women were granted the franchise in school elections, Stone registered to vote. But officials notified her that she would not be allowed to vote unless she added "Blackwell" to her signature. This she refused to do, and so she was not able to vote. Because her time and energy were consumed with suffrage work, she did not challenge the action in a court of law.


Children

Stone and Blackwell had one daughter,
Alice Stone Blackwell Alice Stone Blackwell (September 14, 1857 – March 15, 1950) was an American feminist, suffragist, journalist, radical socialist, and human rights advocate. Early life and education Blackwell was born in East Orange, New Jersey to Henry Browne ...
, born September 14, 1857, who became a leader of the suffrage movement and wrote the first biography of her mother, ''Lucy Stone: Pioneer Woman Suffragist.'' In 1859, while the family was living temporarily in Chicago, Stone miscarried and lost a baby boy.


Waning activism

After her marriage, from the summer of 1855 to the summer of 1857, Stone continued a full lecturing, petitioning, and organizing schedule. In January 1856, Stone was accused in court, and spoke in defense of a rumor put forward by the prosecution that Stone gave a knife to former slave
Margaret Garner Margaret Garner, called "Peggy" (died 1858), was an enslaved African-American woman in pre-Civil War America who killed her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. Garner and her family had escaped enslavement in J ...
, on trial for the killing of her own child to prevent it from being enslaved. Stone was said to have slipped the prisoner the knife so that Garner could kill herself if she was forced to return to slavery. Stone was referred to by the court as "Mrs. Lucy Stone Blackwell" and was asked if she wanted to defend herself; she preferred to address the assembly off the record after adjournment, saying "...With my own teeth I would tear open my veins and let the earth drink my blood, rather than wear the chains of slavery. How then could I blame her for wishing her child to find freedom with God and the angels, where no chains are?" The birth of her daughter in September 1857, however, began to reduce the level of her activism. Stone had made preliminary arrangements for the 1857 national convention to be held in Providence, but because she would not be able to attend it, she handed responsibility to Susan B. Anthony and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. When the
Panic of 1857 The Panic of 1857 was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F. Morse in 1844, the Panic of 1857 was ...
disrupted Anthony's plan to move the convention to Chicago, Stone made the announcement that the next National Woman's Rights Convention would be in May 1858. Anthony helped Stone arrange the 1858 convention and then took sole responsibility for the 1859 meeting. Elizabeth Cady Stanton took charge of the 1860 convention. Stone hired a nursemaid to help care for her daughter, who was in poor health for several years, but she didn't trust her ability to provide proper care when Stone was absent. Stone eventually withdrew from most public work to stay at home with her child. She resigned from the Central Committee, which organized the annual women's rights conventions. She began to suffer from self-doubt and a lack of drive in addition to the debilitating headaches that had plagued her for years. She made only two public appearances during the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
(1861–1865): to attend the founding convention of the
Women's Loyal National League The Women's Loyal National League, also known as the Woman's National Loyal League and other variations of that name, was formed on May 14, 1863, to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery. It was organized ...
and the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS; 1833–1870) was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this socie ...
, both in 1863. Stone began to increase her reform activities back to a normal level after the Civil War had ended. As a lifelong believer in nonresistance, Stone could not support the war effort as so many of her friends did. She could certainly support the drive to end slavery, however, which the war had made into a realistic possibility. In 1863, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony organized the
Women's Loyal National League The Women's Loyal National League, also known as the Woman's National Loyal League and other variations of that name, was formed on May 14, 1863, to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery. It was organized ...
, the first national women's political organization in the U.S. It collected nearly 400,000 signatures on petitions to abolish slavery in the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time. Despite her reduced public activity, Stone agreed to preside over the League's founding convention, and she later agreed to manage its office for two weeks to give Anthony a badly-needed break. She declined, however, to go on lecture tours for the League. Henry Blackwell had for years worked with real estate investments. In 1864, amid wartime inflation, his investments began to pay off handsomely. Stone was enormously relieved to have the family freed from the debts that had been contracted to buy investment property. This major improvement in the family's finances enabled Blackwell to scale back his business efforts and devote more of his time to social reform activities. Beginning to ease back into public activity, Stone embarked on a lecture tour on women's rights in New York and New England in the autumn of 1865. She was still experiencing periods of self-doubt a year later, but, with Blackwell's encouragement, she traveled with him on a joint lecture tour in 1866.


National organizations


American Equal Rights Association

Slavery was abolished in December 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which raised questions about the future role of the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS; 1833–1870) was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this socie ...
(AASS). In January 1866, Stone and Anthony traveled to an AASS meeting in Boston to propose a merger of the anti-slavery and women's movements into one that would campaign for equal rights for all citizens. The AASS, preferring to focus on the rights of African Americans, especially the newly freed slaves, rejected their proposal. In May 1866, Anthony and Stanton organized the Eleventh
National Women's Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Convention ...
, the first since before the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
began. In a move similar to the proposal that had been made earlier to anti-slavery forces, the convention voted to transform itself into a new organization called the
American Equal Rights Association The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) was formed in 1866 in the United States. According to its constitution, its purpose was "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color ...
(AERA), whose purpose was to campaign for the equal rights for all, especially the right of suffrage. Stone did not attend the AERA's founding convention, most likely for fear of the recent
cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium '' Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting an ...
outbreak in New York City, the meeting's location. She was nevertheless elected to the new organization's executive committee. Blackwell was elected as the AERA's recording secretary. In 1867, Stone and Blackwell opened the AERA's difficult campaign in
Kansas Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...
in support of
referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a Direct democracy, direct vote by the Constituency, electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a Representative democr ...
s in that state that would
enfranchise Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to ...
both African Americans and women. They led the effort for three months before turning the work over to others and returning home. Neither of the Kansas referendums was approved by the voters. Disagreements over tactics used during the Kansas campaign contributed to a growing split in the women's movement, which was formalized after the AERA convention in 1869.


Split within the women's movement

The immediate cause of the split was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. In one of their most controversial moves, Anthony and Stanton campaigned against the amendment, insisting that women and African Americans should be enfranchised at the same time. They said that by effectively enfranchising all men while excluding all women, the amendment would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women. Stone supported the amendment. She had expected, however, that progressive forces would push for the
enfranchisement Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
of African Americans and women at the same time and was distressed when they did not. In 1867, she wrote to
Abby Kelley Foster Abby Kelley Foster (January 15, 1811 – January 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist and radical social reformer active from the 1830s to 1870s. She became a fundraiser, lecturer and committee organizer for the influential American Anti-Sla ...
, an abolitionist, to protest the plan to enfranchise black men first. "O Abby", she wrote, "it is a terrible mistake you are all making... There is no other name given by which this country can be saved, but that of woman." In a dramatic debate with
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...
at the AERA convention in 1869, Stone argued that suffrage for women was more important than suffrage for African Americans. She nevertheless supported the amendment, saying, "But I thank God for that XV. Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I will be thankful in my soul if ''any'' body can get out of the terrible pit. But I believe that the safety of the government would be more promoted by the admission of woman as an element of restoration and harmony than the negro." Stone and her allies expected that their active support for the amendment to enfranchise black men would lead their abolitionist friends in Congress to push for an amendment to enfranchise women as the next step, but that did not happen. Henry Blackwell, Stone's husband and an important figure in the suffrage movement in the coming years, also supported the amendment. His special interest, however, which he pursued for decades, was in convincing southern politicians that the enfranchisement of women would help to ensure white supremacy in their region. In 1867, he published an open letter to southern legislatures, assuring them that if both blacks and women were enfranchised, "the political supremacy of your white race will remain unchanged" and "the black race would gravitate by the law of nature toward the tropics." Stone's reaction to this idea is unknown. The AERA essentially collapsed after its acrimonious convention in May 1869, and two competing woman suffrage organizations were created in its aftermath. Two days after the convention, Anthony, Stanton and their allies formed the
National Woman Suffrage Association The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement s ...
(NWSA). In November 1869, Lucy Stone,
Julia Ward Howe Julia Ward Howe (; May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American author and poet, known for writing the " Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the original 1870 pacifist Mother's Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism ...
and their allies formed the competing
American Woman Suffrage Association The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was a single-issue national organization formed in 1869 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. The AWSA lobbied state governments to enact laws granting or expanding women's right to vote ...
(AWSA). The AWSA initially was the larger of the two organizations, but it declined in strength during the 1880s. Even after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, differences between the two organizations remained. The AWSA worked almost exclusively for women's suffrage while the NWSA initially worked on a wide range of issues, including divorce reform and
equal pay for women Equal pay for equal work is the concept of labour rights that individuals in the same workplace be given equal pay. It is most commonly used in the context of sexual discrimination, in relation to the gender pay gap. Equal pay relates to the ful ...
. The AWSA included both men and women among its leadership while the NWSA was led by women. The AWSA worked for suffrage mostly at the state level while the NWSA worked more at the national level. The AWSA cultivated an image of respectability while the NWSA sometimes used confrontational tactics.


Divorce and "free love"

In 1870, at the twentieth anniversary celebration of the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Stanton spoke for three hours rallying the crowd for women's right to divorce. By then, Stone's position on the matter had shifted significantly. Personal differences between Stone and Stanton came to the fore on the issue, with Stone writing "We believe in ''marriage for life'', and deprecate all this loose, pestiferous talk in favor of ''easy divorce.''" Stone made it clear that those wishing for "free divorce" were not associated with Stone's organization AWSA, headed at that time by Reverend
Henry Ward Beecher Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His r ...
. Stone wrote against 'free love:' "Be not deceived—''free love means free lust.''" This editorial position would come back to haunt Stone. Also in 1870, Elizabeth Roberts Tilton told her husband
Theodore Tilton Theodore Tilton (October 2, 1835 – May 29, 1907) was an American newspaper editor, poet and abolitionist. He was born in New York City to Silas Tilton and Eusebia Tilton (same surname). On his twentieth birthday, October 2, 1855, he married ...
that she had been carrying on an
adulterous Adultery (from Latin ''adulterium'') is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and legal ...
relation with his good friend Henry Ward Beecher. Theodore Tilton published an editorial saying that Beecher "has at a most unseemly time of life been detected in improper intimacies with certain ladies of his congregation." Tilton also informed Stanton about the alleged affair, and Stanton passed the information to
Victoria Woodhull Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for President of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians ...
. Woodhull, a free love advocate, printed innuendo about Beecher, and began to woo Tilton, convincing him to write a book of her life story from imaginative material that she supplied. In 1871, Stone wrote to a friend "my one wish in regard to Mrs. Woodhull is, that eithershe nor her ideas, may be so much as heard of at our meeting." Woodhull's self-serving activities were attracting disapproval from both centrist AWSA and radical NWSA. To divert criticism from herself, Woodhull published a denunciation of Beecher in 1872 saying that he practiced free love in private while speaking out against it from the pulpit. This caused a sensation in the press, and resulted in an inconclusive legal suit and a subsequent formal inquiry lasting well into 1875. The furor over adultery and the friction between various camps of women's rights activists took focus away from legitimate political aims. Henry Blackwell wrote to Stone from Michigan where he was working toward putting woman suffrage into the state constitution, saying "This Beecher-Tilton affair is playing the deuce with oman suffragein Michigan. No chance of success this year I fancy."


Voting rights

In 1870, Stone and Blackwell moved from New Jersey to
Dorchester, Massachusetts Dorchester (colloquially referred to as Dot) is a Boston neighborhood comprising more than in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester ...
, which today is a neighborhood of Boston just south of downtown. There they purchased Pope's Hill, a seventeen-room house with extensive grounds and several outbuildings. Many of the town's women had been active in the Dorchester Female Anti-Slavery Society and, by 1870, a number of local women were suffragists.


New England Woman Suffrage Association

At her new home, Stone worked closely with the
New England Woman Suffrage Association The New England Woman Suffrage Association (NEWSA) was established in November 1868 to campaign for the right of women to vote in the U.S. Its principal leaders were Julia Ward Howe, its first president, and Lucy Stone, who later became president. ...
(NEWSA), the first major political organization in the U.S. with women's suffrage as its goal. Two years earlier she had traveled to Boston to participate in its founding convention and had been elected to its executive committee. In 1877, she became its president and served in that position until her death in 1893.


''Woman's Journal''

In 1870, Stone and Blackwell founded the ''
Woman's Journal ''Woman's Journal'' was an American women's rights periodical published from 1870 to 1931. It was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. In 1917 it was purchased by ...
'', an eight-page weekly newspaper based in Boston. Originally intended primarily to voice the concerns of the NEWSA and the AWSA, by the 1880s it had become an unofficial voice of the suffrage movement as a whole. Stone edited the journal for the rest of her life, assisted by her husband and their daughter
Alice Stone Blackwell Alice Stone Blackwell (September 14, 1857 – March 15, 1950) was an American feminist, suffragist, journalist, radical socialist, and human rights advocate. Early life and education Blackwell was born in East Orange, New Jersey to Henry Browne ...
. Stone did not collect a salary for her work on the paper, which required continual financial support. One of her greatest challenges was raising money to keep it going. Its circulation reached a peak of 6,000, although in 1878 it was 2,000 less than it had been two years earlier. After the AWSA and NWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890, the ''Woman's Journal'' became its official voice and eventually the basis for a newspaper with a much wider circulation. In 1917, at a time when victory for women's suffrage was coming closer,
Carrie Chapman Catt Carrie Chapman Catt (; January 9, 1859 Fowler, p. 3 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt ...
, leader of the NAWSA, said, "There can be no overestimating the value to the suffrage cause of the ''Woman's Journal''... The suffrage success of to-day is not conceivable without the ''Woman's Journals part in it.


"The Colorado Lesson"

In 1877, Stone was asked by
Rachel Foster Avery Rachel Foster Avery (December 30, 1858 – October 26, 1919) was active in the American women's suffrage movement during the late 19th century, working closely with Susan B. Anthony and other movement leaders. She rose to be corresponding sec ...
to come assist
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
activists in the organization of a popular referendum campaign with the aim of gaining suffrage for Coloradan women. Together, Stone and Blackwell worked the northern half of the state in late summer, while Susan Anthony traveled the less-promising rough-and-tumble southern half. Patchwork and scattered support was reported by activists, with some areas more receptive. Latino voters proved largely uninterested in voting reform; some of that resistance was blamed on the extreme opposition to the measure voiced by the Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado. All but a handful of politicians in Colorado ignored the measure, or actively fought it. Stone concentrated on convincing Denver voters during the October ballot, but the measure lost heavily, with 68% voting against it. Married working men showed the greatest support, and young single men the least. Blackwell called it "The Colorado Lesson", writing that "Woman suffrage can never be carried by a popular vote, without a political party behind it."


School board vote

In 1879, after Stone organized a petition by suffragists across the state, Massachusetts women were given strictly delimited voting rights: a woman who could prove the same qualifications as a male voter was allowed to cast her vote for members of the school board. Lucy Stone applied to the voting board in Boston but was required to sign her husband's surname as her own. She refused, and never participated in that vote.Ohio History Central
''Lucy Stone''.
Retrieved March 10, 2009.


Reconciliation

In 1887, eighteen years after the rift formed in the American women's rights movement, Stone proposed a merger of the two groups. Plans were drawn up, and, at their annual meetings, propositions were heard and voted on, then passed to the other group for evaluation. By 1890, the organizations resolved their differences and merged to form the
National American Woman Suffrage Association The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...
(NAWSA). Stone was too weak with heart problems and respiratory illness to attend its first convention but was elected chair of the executive committee. Stanton was president of the new organization, but Anthony, who had the title of vice president, was its leader in practice. Starting early in January 1891,
Carrie Chapman Catt Carrie Chapman Catt (; January 9, 1859 Fowler, p. 3 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt ...
visited Stone repeatedly at Pope's Hill, for the purpose of learning from Stone about the ways of political organizing. Stone had previously met Catt at an Iowa state woman's suffrage convention in October 1889, and had been impressed at her ambition and sense of presence, saying "Mrs. Chapman will be heard from yet in this movement." Stone mentored Catt the rest of that winter, giving her a wealth of information about lobbying techniques and fund-raising. Catt later used the teaching to good effect in leading the final drive to gain women the vote in 1920.Kerr, 1992, pp. 236–237. Catt, Stone and Blackwell went together to the January 1892 NAWSA convention in Washington, DC. Along with
Isabella Beecher Hooker Isabella Beecher Hooker (February 22, 1822 – January 25, 1907) was a leader, lecturer and social activist in the American suffragist movement. Early life Isabella Holmes Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the fifth child and sec ...
, Stone, Stanton and Anthony, the "triumvirate" of women's suffrage, were called away from the convention's opening hours by an unexpected woman suffrage hearing before the
United States House Committee on the Judiciary The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, ...
. Stone told the assembled congressmen "I come before this committee with the sense which I always feel, that we are handicapped as women in what we try to do for ourselves by the single fact that we have no vote. This cheapens us. You do not care so much for us as if we had votes..." Stone argued that men should work to pass laws for equality in property rights between the sexes. Stone demanded an eradication of
coverture Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine in the English common law in which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband, so that she had no independent legal existence of her own. U ...
, the folding of a wife's property into that of her husband.Mani, 2007, p. 115. Stone's impromptu speech paled in comparison to Stanton's brilliant outpouring which preceded hers. Stone later published Stanton's speech in its entirety in the ''Woman's Journal'' as "Solitude of Self". Back at the NAWSA convention, Anthony was elected president, with Stanton and Stone becoming honorary presidents.


Final appearance

In 1892, Stone was convinced to sit for a portrait in sculpture, rendered by
Anne Whitney Anne Whitney (September 2, 1821 – January 23, 1915) was an American sculptor and poet. She made full-length and bust sculptures of prominent political and historical figures, and her works are in major museums in the United States. She received ...
, sculptor and poet. Stone had previously protested the proposed portrait for more than a year, saying that the funds to engage an artist would be better spent on suffrage work. Stone finally yielded to pressure from Frances Willard, the
New England Women's Club The New England Women's Club (est. May 1868) of Boston, Massachusetts, was one of the two earliest women's clubs in the United States, having been founded a couple of months after Sorosis in New York City.''The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of U ...
and some of her friends and neighbors in the Boston area, and sat while Whitney produced a
bust Bust commonly refers to: * A woman's breasts * Bust (sculpture), of head and shoulders * An arrest Bust may also refer to: Places * Bust, Bas-Rhin, a city in France *Lashkargah, Afghanistan, known as Bust historically Media * ''Bust'' (magazin ...
. In February 1893, Stone invited her brother Frank and his wife Sarah to come see the bust, before it was shipped to Chicago for display at the upcoming
World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
. Stone went with her daughter to Chicago in May 1893 and gave her last public speeches at the
World's Congress of Representative Women The World's Congress of Representative Women was a week-long convention for the voicing of women's concerns, held within The Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago, May 1893). At 81 meetings, organized by women from each of ...
where she saw a strong international involvement in women's congresses, with almost 500 women from 27 countries speaking at 81 meetings, and attendance topping 150,000 at the week-long event. Stone's immediate focus was on state referendums under consideration in New York and Nebraska. Stone presented a speech she had prepared entitled "The Progress of Fifty Years" wherein she described the milestones of change, and said "I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned." Stone met with Carrie Chapman Catt and
Abigail Scott Duniway Abigail Scott Duniway (October 22, 1834 – October 11, 1915) was an American women's rights advocate, newspaper editor and writer, whose efforts were instrumental in gaining voting rights for women. Biography Abigail S. Duniway was born Abigai ...
to form a plan for organizing in Colorado, and Stone attended two days of meetings about getting a woman suffrage drive restarted in Kansas. Stone and her daughter returned home to Pope's Hill on May 28. Those who knew Stone well thought her voice was lacking strength. In August when she and her husband Harry wanted to take part in more meetings at the Exposition, she was too weak to go. Stone was diagnosed as suffering from advanced stomach cancer in September. She wrote final letters to friends and relatives. Having "prepared for death with serenity and an unwavering concern for the women's cause", Lucy Stone died on October 18, 1893, at the age of 75. At her funeral three days later, 1,100 people crowded the church, and hundreds more stood silently outside. Six women and six men served as pallbearers, including sculptor Anne Whitney, and Stone's old abolitionist friends Thomas Wentworth Higginson and
Samuel Joseph May Samuel Joseph May (September 12, 1797 – July 1, 1871) was an American reformer during the nineteenth century who championed education, women's rights, and abolition of slavery. May argued on behalf of all working people that the rights of h ...
. Mourners lined the streets for a sight of the funeral procession, and front-page banner headlines ran in news accounts. Stone's death was the most widely reported of any American woman's up to that time. According to her wishes, her body was cremated, making her the first person cremated in Massachusetts, though a wait of over two months was undertaken while the crematorium at
Forest Hills Cemetery Forest Hills Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery, greenspace, arboretum and sculpture garden located in the Forest Hills section of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The cemetery was established in 1848 as a publ ...
could be completed. Stone's remains are interred at Forest Hills; a chapel there is named after her.


Legacy

Lucy Stone's refusal to take her husband's name, as an assertion of her own rights, was controversial then, and is largely what she is remembered for today. Women who continue to use their maiden name after marriage are still occasionally known as "Lucy Stoners" in the United States. In 1921, the
Lucy Stone League The Lucy Stone League is a women's rights organization founded in 1921. Its motto is "A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost."“lucystoneleague.org�Archivedfrom the original ...
was founded in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
by Ruth Hale, described in 1924 by ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' as the "'Lucy Stone'-spouse" of
Heywood Broun Heywood Campbell Broun Jr. (; December 7, 1888 – December 18, 1939) was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, later known as The Newspap ...
. The League was re-instituted in 1997. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Matilda Joslyn Gage Matilda Joslyn Gage (March 24, 1826 – March 18, 1898) was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women's suffrage in the United States (i.e. the right to vote) but she also campaigned for Native Ameri ...
and
Ida Husted Harper Ida Husted Harper (February 18, 1851 – March 14, 1931) was an American author, journalist, columnist, and suffragist, as well as the author of a three-volume biography of suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony at Anthony's request. Harper also c ...
began in 1876 to write the ''
History of Woman Suffrage ''History of Woman Suffrage'' is a book that was produced by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper. Published in six volumes from 1881 to 1922, it is a history of the women's suffrage movement, prima ...
''. They planned for one volume but finished four before the death of Anthony in 1906, and two more afterward. The first three volumes chronicled the beginnings of the women's rights movement, including the years that Stone was active. Because of differences between Stone and Stanton that had been highlighted in the schism between NWSA and AWSA, Stone's place in history was marginalized in the work. The text was used as the standard scholarly resource on 19th-century U.S. feminism for much of the 20th century, causing Stone's extensive contribution to be overlooked in many histories of women's causes.Kerr, Andrea Moore, Ph.D. (2002) The Trustees of Reservations. Archived on September 27, 2007. Retrieved on January 22, 2010. On August 13, 1968, the 150th anniversary of her birth, the U.S. Postal Service honored Stone with a 50¢ postage stamp in the Prominent Americans series. The image was adapted from a photograph included in Alice Stone Blackwell's biography of Stone. In 1986, Stone was inducted into the
National Women's Hall of Fame The National Women's Hall of Fame (NWHF) is an American institution incorporated in 1969 by a group of men and women in Seneca Falls, New York, although it did not induct its first enshrinees until 1973. As of 2021, it had 303 inductees. Induc ...
. In 1999, a series of six tall marble panels with a bronze bust in each was added to the
Massachusetts State House The Massachusetts State House, also known as the Massachusetts Statehouse or the New State House, is the state capitol and seat of government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, located in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. The buildin ...
; the busts are of Stone,
Florence Luscomb Florence Hope Luscomb (February 6, 1887 – October 13, 1985) was an American architect and women's suffrage activist in Massachusetts. She was one of the first ten women graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her degrees ...
,
Mary Kenney O'Sullivan Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (January 8, 1864 – January 18, 1943), was an organizer in the early U.S. labor movement. She learned early the importance of unions from poor treatment received at her first job in dressmaking. Making a career in bookbind ...
,
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (August 31, 1842 – March 13, 1924) was an African-American publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor of the '' Woman's Era'', the first national newspaper published by and for African-Ameri ...
,
Sarah Parker Remond Sarah Parker Remond (June 6, 1826 – December 13, 1894) was an American lecturer, activist and abolitionist campaigner. Born a free woman in the state of Massachusetts, she became an international activist for human rights and women's ...
, and
Dorothea Dix Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802July 17, 1887) was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first gen ...
. As well, two quotations from each of those women (including Stone) are etched on their own marble panel, and the wall behind all the panels has wallpaper made of six government documents repeated over and over, with each document being related to a cause of one or more of the women. In 2000,
Amy Ray Amy Elizabeth Ray (born April 12, 1964) is an American alto singer-songwriter and member of the contemporary folk duo Indigo Girls. She also pursues a solo career and has released six albums under her own name, and founded a record company, Daemo ...
of the
Indigo Girls Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo from Atlanta, Georgia, United States, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. The two met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part o ...
included a song entitled ''Lucystoners'' on her first solo recording, ''Stag''. An administration and classroom building on Livingston Campus at
Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
in
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
is named for Lucy Stone.
Warren, Massachusetts Warren is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 4,975 at the 2020 census. The town contains the villages of Warren and West Warren. History Warren was first settled in 1664 and was officially incorpora ...
contains a Lucy Stone Park, along the
Quaboag River The Quaboag River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 river in Massachusetts that heads at Quaboag Pond in Brookfield at an elevation of above sea level ...
. Anne Whitney's 1893 bust of Lucy Stone is on display in Boston's
Faneuil Hall Faneuil Hall ( or ; previously ) is a marketplace and meeting hall located near the waterfront and today's Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. Opened in 1742, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others ...
building. She is featured on the
Boston Women's Heritage Trail The Boston Women's Heritage Trail is a series of walking tours in Boston, Massachusetts, leading past sites important to Boston women's history. The tours wind through several neighborhoods, including the Back Bay and Beacon Hill, commemorating w ...
. On September 19, 2018, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy
Ray Mabus Raymond Edwin Mabus Jr. (; born October 11, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2017. Mabus previously served as the State Auditor ...
announced the name of the fifth ship of a six unit construction contract as USNS ''Lucy Stone'' (T-AO 209). This ship will be part of the latest ''John Lewis''-class of Fleet Replenishment Oilers named in honor of U.S. civil and human rights heroes currently under construction at General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, CA.


Home

Stone's birthplace, the Lucy Stone Home Site, is owned and managed by
The Trustees of Reservations The Trustees of Reservations is a non-profit land conservation and historic preservation organization dedicated to preserving natural and historical places in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is the oldest land conservation nonprofit orga ...
, a non-profit land conservation and historic preservation organization dedicated to preserving natural and historic places in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The site includes 61 acres of forested land on the side of Coys Hill in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. Although the farmhouse in which Stone was born and married burned to the ground in 1950, its ruins are at the center of the property. At the time of Stone's wedding, both her parents and a married brother and his family lived in the two-and-one-half-story house, and family descendants continued to live there until 1936. In 1915, a pilgrimage of suffragists placed a memorial tablet on the house, which read: "This house was the birthplace of Lucy Stone, pioneer advocate of equal rights for women. Born August 13, 1818. Married May 1, 1855, died October 18, 1893. In grateful memory Massachusetts suffragists placed this tablet August 13, 1915." That tablet, severely damaged but surviving the 1950 fire, is now in the Quaboag Historical Society Museum. After the fire, the surrounding farmland was abandoned and left to revert to forest, and it is now used for hunting and harvesting timber. The Trustees acquired the home site in 2002 and have been maintaining the property ever since.


See also

*
First-wave feminism First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is often used s ...
*
History of feminism The history of feminism comprises the narratives ( chronological or thematic) of the movements and ideologies which have aimed at equal rights for women. While feminists around the world have differed in causes, goals, and intentions depen ...
*
List of civil rights leaders Civil rights leaders are influential figures in the promotion and implementation of political freedom and the expansion of personal civil liberties and rights. They work to protect individuals and groups from political repressio ...
*
List of suffragists and suffragettes This list of suffragists and suffragettes includes noted individuals active in the worldwide women's suffrage movement who have campaigned or strongly advocated for women's suffrage, the organisations which they formed or joined, and the public ...
*
Lucy Stone League The Lucy Stone League is a women's rights organization founded in 1921. Its motto is "A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost."“lucystoneleague.org�Archivedfrom the original ...
*
Timeline of women's suffrage Women's suffrage – the right of women to vote – has been achieved at various times in countries throughout the world. In many nations, women's suffrage was granted before universal suffrage, so women and men from certain classes or races w ...
* Women's suffrage organizations *
Women's suffrage in the United States In the 1700's to early 1800's New Jersey did allow Women the right to vote before the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 19th Amendment, but in 1807 the state restricted the right to vote to "...tax-paying, ...


References


Notes


Bibliography

* Baker, Jean H. ''Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists.'' Hill and Wang, New York, 2005. * Baker, Jean H
''Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited.''
Oxford University Press, 2002. * Blackwell, Alice Stone
''Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights.''
Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1930. * Buhle, Mari Jo; Buhle, Paul
''The concise history of woman suffrage.''
University of Illinois, 1978. * Fischer, Gayle V
''Pantaloons and Power: A Nineteenth-century Dress Reform in the United States.''
Kent State University Press, 2001. * Hays, Elinor Rice
''Morning Star: A Biography of Lucy Stone 1818–1893.''
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. . * Hinks, Peter P, John R. McKivigan, and R. Owen Williams
''Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition: Greenwood Milestones in African American History.''
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007. * Lasser, Carol and Merrill, Marlene Deahl, editors
''Friends and Sisters: Letters between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846–93''
University of Illinois Press, 1987. * Kerr, Andrea Moore
''Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality.''
New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992. * Mani, Bonnie G
''Women, Power, and Political Change.''
Lexington Books, 2007. * McMillen, Sally Gregory
''Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life''
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. * McMillen, Sally Gregory
''Seneca Falls and the origins of the women's rights movement.''
Oxford University Press, 2008. * Mead, Rebecca J
''How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914.''
New York University Press, 2004. * Million, Joelle
''Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Women's Rights Movement.''
Praeger, 2003. * Schenken, Suzanne O'Dea
''From Suffrage to the Senate.''
Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1999. pp. 644–646. * Sherr, Lynn
''Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words''
Times Books, 1995. * Spender, Dale. (1982
''Women of Ideas and what Men Have Done to Them.''
Ark Paperbacks, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1983, pp. 347–357. * Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; Anthony, Susan B.; Gage, Matilda Joslyn
''History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I''
covering 1848–1861. Copyright 1881. * Stevens, Peter F. (May 26, 2005)

Dorchester Reporter. * Wheeler, Leslie. "Lucy Stone: Radical beginnings (1818–1893)" in Spender, Dale (ed.
''Feminist theorists: Three centuries of key women thinkers''
Pantheon 1983, pp. 124–136.


External links



History of American Women. 2020
''The Liberator'' Files
Items concerning Lucy Stone from Horace Seldon's collection and summary of research of William Lloyd Garrison's ''The Liberator'' original copies at the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
Lucy Stone photo
from the Special Collections and University Archives Department at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG or UNC Greensboro) is a public research university in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina system. UNCG, like all members of the UNC system, is a stand- ...

Lucy Stone letter
from the Special Collections and University Archives Department at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG or UNC Greensboro) is a public research university in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina system. UNCG, like all members of the UNC system, is a stand- ...

Papers in the Woman's Rights Collection, 1846–1943.
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Papers, 1832–1981.Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. * Michals, Debr
"Lucy Stone"
National Women's History Museum. 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:Stone, Lucy 1818 births 1893 deaths Abolitionists from Boston American feminists American suffragists American tax resisters American women's rights activists Blackwell family Deaths from stomach cancer Feminism and history History of women's rights in the United States Lecturers Mount Holyoke College alumni Oberlin College alumni People from Gardner, Massachusetts Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts American libertarians People from West Brookfield, Massachusetts People from Orange, New Jersey Proponents of Christian feminism Women civil rights activists