Ladies...For You - The Women's Rights Movement

      Where I reside is rich in history that has affected the course of our great nation.  Directly across the street from my current home is a site significant in the equal treatment of females; the location of America's first women's rights convention.

      The seed for the first convention was planted in 1840 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, a conference that refused to seat Stanton, Mott and other women delegates from America because of their sex.  Stanton and Mott discussed calling a convention to address the condition of women...and 8 years later, it came about as a spontaneous event.

      In July, 1848, Mott was was visiting her sister, Martha Coffin Wright, in the village of Waterloo, New York; the next town west of Seneca Falls.  A social visit brought together Mott, Stanton, Wright, Mary Ann McClintock and Jane Hunt, who hosted the tea at her husband's mansion.  All except Stanton were Quakers, a sect that afforded women some measure of equality, and all five were well acquainted with antislavery and temperance meetings.  In April of that year, the long-deliberated New York Married Woman's Property Rights Act was passed.  Stanton noted the time had come for women's wrongs to be laid before the public and women themselves must shoulder the responsibility.  During their social, the women decided on a call for a convention "to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women."

      At a second social at the McClintock home, Stanton drew up the Declaration of Sentiments that would define the meeting; that "all men and women had been created equal" and listed 18 "injuries and usurpations" the same number of charges leveled against the King of England "on the part of man toward woman."  Stanton also drafted eleven resolutions, making the arguement that women had a natural right to equality in all spheres.  The 9th resolution held forth the radical assertion that it was the duty of women to secure for themselves the right to vote...and the women's suffrage movement was born.  "The grievances reflected the severe limitations on women's legal rights in America at the time: women could not vote; they could not participate in the creation of laws that they had to obey; their property was taxed; in unusual cases of divorce, custody of children was automatically awarded to the father; access to the professions and high education generally was closed to women; and most churches barred women from participating in the ministry or other positions of authority." 

      The convention took place on July 19 and 20, 1848 at the Wesleyan Methodist Church on Fall Street at the corner of Mynderse Street in downtown Seneca Falls, New York, which is located at the northern end of Cayuga Lake in the heart of the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.  Seneca Falls was a key location being on the Great Western Highway from Albany and along the Erie Canal giving the village access and water connections.  The meeting was publicized only by a small unsigned notice in the Seneca Courier; the local newspaper.  300 people, including 40 men, came from 5 miles around.  Since no woman felt capable of presiding, the task was undertaken by James Mott, Lucretia's husband.  All of the resolutions were passed unanimously except for women's suffrage, an idea and concept designed to appeal to the predominatly Quaker audience, whose male contingent commonly declined to vote.  Former slave and editor of the Rochester, New York North Star Newspaper, Frederick Douglass, swayed the gathering into agreeing to the resolution.  At the convention's closing, a final resolve was opened "for the overthrowing of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to women equal participation with men in various trades, professions and commerce."  100 men and women signed the Seneca Falls Declaration - although subsequent criticism caused some of them to remove their names.  Amelia Bloomer, who attended the meeting but did not sign the Declaration, supported the cause through her newspaper, The Lily, which she published to a circulation of 4,000 focusing on women's rights and the temperance movement.

      Days later, a meeting was held in Rochester, New York with Frederick Douglass discussing the rights of women.  James Gordon Bennett was motivated by the meeting and printed the entire Declaration of Sentiments in the New York Herald newspaper he was editor of.  At age 32 at the time of the Seneca Falls Convention, Stanton, in 1851, met temperance worker Susan B. Anthony and the two joined in the long struggle to secure the vote for women.  When the national victory came in 1920, 72 years after the first organized meeting in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration - Charlotte Woodward, a young worker in a glove maufactory - had lived long enough to cast her ballot.

      Some early victories were had in the territories of Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870), although Utah women were disenfranchised by the United States Congress in 1887.  Other territories and states granted women the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th century, but universal women's suffrage did not come until the 19th Amendmant to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1920...only 87 years ago.

      Born a slave by the name of Isabella Baunfree and later becoming an abolishionist and women's rights advocate, Baunfree changed her name to the self-given Sojourner Truth in 1843 and took part in the original women's rights convention 5 years later.  Inspired by the Seneca Falls gathering, Truth later made a speech at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron in 1851, where she delivered her "Ain't I A Woman?" address. 

      Seneca Falls Convention Days are held annually celebrating the original Women's Rights Convention.  This year, the observation will be held in downtown Seneca Falls July 19th - July 22nd, and has been entitled, "Bridge To Bridge...Generation To Generation...Women Making History..."  Food, music and history will come alive for this annual celebration as it brings to light the ongoing struggle for equality among all people regardless of their education, religion, ethnic background, sexual preference, age, income or gender. 

      Among sites and activities open to the public are the Women's Rights National Historical Park and Visitor's Center including exhibits, interactive displays and a 30 minute film, "Dreams of Equality."  There's also The Lily, the Amelia Bloomer house, the National Women's Hall of Fame, the Seneca Falls Heritage Area, the Seneca Museum of Waterways and Industry, the Seneca Falls Historical Society Museum and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house.  You'll also be able to view the site of the original convention, The Wesleyan Chapel, which has been restored allowing a look at two of the original four walls and some roof timbers; all that remains of the original Wesleyan Methodist Church; as well as an outdoor amphitheater with seating for special presentations and a 100 foot long marble waterwall featuring the Declaration of Sentiments and the names of those who signed engraved in stone behind a flow of water.  After touring the women's rights sites, there is also the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge; the largest preserve for migratory birds in northeast America and eastern-central Canada; the Seneca-Cayuga Canal, Cayuga Lake State Park and many wineries along the Cayuga Wine Trail.