Lucretia Coffin was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts. At the age of 13 she attended a Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. After two years at the school, she was appointed assistant teacher. In 1811 Coffin married James Mott, a fellow teacher. They had six children between 1812 and 1828. The Motts campaigned against slavery and offered refuge to runaway slaves after the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed. In the 1830s Lucretia Mott became more active in the abolitionist movement. She served as a delegate to the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. The fact that women were not permitted to speak at that convention inspired Mott to work for equal rights for women, and in 1848 she helped organize the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. In 1866 she was elected president of the American Equal Rights Association. When the women’s suffrage movement divided three years later, Mott tried unsuccessfully to bring the two factions back together. Mott remained active in the women’s suffrage movement until her death in Pennsylvania at age 87.
