Seneca Falls, New York is one of those great little towns in upper New York state.
Many years ago I saw the great documentarian Ken Burns’ show on the genesis of the women’s movement and the the town played a prominent role. It was here in the Methodist church there that the noted document the Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence was first proclaimed.
I returned there on a blustery morning on our way home from the Big Apple, NYC. I knew my wife would love the place. A few years back on a PONY league baseball trip I dragged some boyhood friends through…and even they dug it!
The beautiful town, set on a river is a grand setting for the museum dedicated to Women’s Rights—and it still inspires.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband, devoted abolitionists had been to London in 1840 at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. Here she met Lucretia Mott. Both were angered at being denied official standing at the convention. They were women in a patriarchal society. It was here they plotted the women’s rights convention to be held in Seneca Falls, about 100 miles east of Buffalo.
In the town there is a delightful statue commemorating the meeting of Stanton and that other feminist dynamo Susan B Anthony.
Stanton was a serious Quaker, already devoted to abolition when she made the obvious connection with the bondage of women. She devoted her life then to women’s suffrage, women’s rights within marriage, etc. Much of the time was spent writing speeches and raising her 6 kids. Her Quaker background is evident in this quotation:
“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
More next time.
