LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT
1793 ~ 1880
Lucretia Coffin
was born 2 January 1793
on Nantucket Island
off Massachusetts.
When she was thirteen years old,
she was sent to a
Religious Society of Friends
boarding school at Nine Partners
where her future husband,
James Mott 1788 ~ 1868
was a successful teacher,
who took an active part
in the fight against slavery
and who fully supported
her right to speak in public.
Lucretia Coffin Mott
was one of the premier figures
of the nineteenth century
noted for her eloquence
and superb leadership ability
as a civil rights activist.
Lucretia Coffin Mott
was a dedicated leader
in the abolitionist movement,
in the early peace movement
and was a founding member
of the women's suffrage movement.
She firmly maintained
the ancient Quaker determination
in refusing to bow her head
to either the religious
or secular institutions of her day,
whether it be the prevailing notions
of the meaning of Christianity
or the notions regarding obligations
to a state that sanctioned
the holding of slaves
and the relegation of women
to second class status.
There were times when
her prophetic stance
put her life in danger
at the hands of pro-slavery mobs
and there were other times
when she was threatened
with expulsion for heresy from
The Religious Society of Friends
for leaning a bit too close
to the Unitarianism of the likes of
William Ellery Channing.
Her faith was centered in
the inimitable Sermon on the Mount,
the pillars of which she defined
as justice, love, and mercy.
Like Thomas Jefferson,
she tossed the irrational
and the cruel in scripture aside
as disgraceful idolatry
the absence of which
she felt constituted
~ natural religion.
Lucretia Coffin Mott
died near Philadelphia
11 November 1880.
Sources:
Encyclopedia Americana
World Book Encyclopedia
The New Book of Knowledge
New Standard Encyclopedia
