Lucy stone biography timeline books

  • Lucy stone education
  • Lucy stone accomplishments

    • A leading suffragist and abolitionist, Lucy Stone dedicated her life to battling inequality on all fronts. She was the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree and she defied gender norms when she famously wrote marriage vows to reflect her egalitarian beliefs and refused to take her husband’s last name.

    Born on August 13, 1818 in rural Massachusetts, Stone was one of Francis and Hannah Matthews Stone’s nine children. Her parents were farmers with deep roots in New England. The first Stones arrived in 1635 pursuing religious freedom and her grandfather was a Patriot captain in the American Revolution. She was raised in the Congregational Church and embraced her father’s anti-slavery zeal.

    Much brighter than her brothers, Stone was frustrated by the inequality that encouraged them to attend college while discouraging women from becoming educated. At age sixteen, she worked as a teacher, saving her money so she could attend college. In 1839, she spent a semester at Mount Holyoke, but was forced to return home due to a sister’s illness. Then in 1843, she attended Oberlin College in Ohio. Even progressive Oberlin, however, did not permit Stone to explore her interest in public speaking. When she graduated in 1847, she declined the “honor” of writing a commencement speech that would be read by a man.

    Almost thirty when she completed her education, Stone’s career prospects seemed dim since few professions were open to women. Renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, however, hired her for his American Anti-Slavery Society. She wrote and delivered abolitionist speeches, while also becoming active in women’s rights. Like other female abolitionists, Stone was often heckled and at least once was physically attacked by a mob. Nevertheless, she proved so popular that soon she was out-earning many male lecturers.

    In 1850, two years after the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, Stone organized the first national Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, M

    Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality

    No study of women's history in the United States is complete without an account of Lucy Stone's role in the nineteenth-century drive for legal and political rights for women.This first fully documented biography of Stone describes her rapid rise to fame and power and her later attempt at an equitable mariage.



    Lucy Stone was a Massachusetts newspaper editor, abolitionist, and charismatic orator for the women's rights movement in the last half of the nineteenth century. She was deeply involved in almost every reform issue of her time. Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Horace Greeley, and Louisa May Alcott counted themselves among her friends. Through her public speaking and her newspaper, the Woman's Journal, Stone became the most widely admired woman's rights spokeswoman of her era. In the nineteenth century, Lucy Stone was a household name.



    Kerr begins with Stone's early roots in a poor family in western Massachusetts. She eventually graduated from Oberlin College and then became a full-time public speaker for an anti-slavery society and for women's rights. Despite Stone's strident anti-marriage ideology, she eventually wed Henry Brown Blackwell, and had her first child at the age of thirty-nine.



    Although Kerr tells us about Stone's public accomplishments, she emphasizes Stone's personal struggle for autonomy. "Lucy Stone (Only)" was Stone's trademark signature following her marriage. Her refusal to surrender her birth name was one example of her determination to retain her individuality in an era where a woman's right to a separate identity ended with marriage.



    Of equal importance is Kerr's discussion of Stone's relationship with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as her revisionist treatment of the schism which eventually divided Stone from Stanton and Anthony. Stone urged legislators not to ignore the need for women's suffrage as they rushed t

    Lucy Stone

    American abolitionist and suffragist (1818–1893)

    Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) was an American orator, abolitionist and suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer of 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, 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 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and she supported and sustained it, annually, along with a number of other local, regional, and state 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 (AWSA), which built support for a woman suffrage Constitutional amendment by winning woman suffrage at the local and state 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 influentialWoman's Journal, a weekly periodical that she founded and promoted, Stone aired both her own and differing views about women's rights. Called "the orator", the "morning star," and the "heart and soul" of the women's rights movement, Stone influenced Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women's suffrage.Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that "Lucy Stone was the first person by whom the heart of the Ame

  • Lucy stone early life

    • Lucy Stone

    No study of women's history in the United States is complete without an account of Lucy Stone's role in the nineteenth-century drive for legal and political rights for women.This first fully documented biography of Stone describes her rapid rise to fame and power and her later attempt at an equitable mariage.

    Lucy Stone was a Massachusetts newspaper editor, abolitionist, and charismatic orator for the women's rights movement in the last half of the nineteenth century. She was deeply involved in almost every reform issue of her time. Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Horace Greeley, and Louisa May Alcott counted themselves among her friends. Through her public speaking and her newspaper, the Woman's Journal, Stone became the most widely admired woman's rights spokeswoman of her era. In the nineteenth century, Lucy Stone was a household name.

    Kerr begins with Stone's early roots in a poor family in western Massachusetts. She eventually graduated from Oberlin College and then became a full-time public speaker for an anti-slavery society and for women's rights. Despite Stone's strident anti-marriage ideology, she eventually wed Henry Brown Blackwell, and had her first child at the age of thirty-nine.

    Although Kerr tells us about Stone's public accomplishments, she emphasizes Stone's personal struggle for autonomy. "Lucy Stone (Only)" was Stone's trademark signature following her marriage. Her refusal to surrender her birth name was one example of her determination to retain her individuality in an era where a woman's right to a separate identity ended with marriage.

    Of equal importance is Kerr's discussion of Stone's relationship with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as her revisionist treatment of the schism which eventually divided Stone from Stanton and Anthony. Stone urged legislators not to ignore the need for women's suffrage as they rushed to enfranchise black males. Stanton and Anth
  • When did lucy stone die