Born August 13, 1818, in rural Massachusetts. Lucy was one of nine children of Francis & Hannah Matthews Stone. Her parents were farmers with extensive family ties to New England. Her ancestors had first arrived in the area all the way back in 1635, fleeing religious persecution & her grandfather was a patriot captain during the American Revolution. Lucy was raised in the Congregational Church & embraced her father's abolitionist enthusiasm.
Lucy had shown herself to be much more scholarly than her brothers, she was frustrated by the double standard, where women were encouraged to further their education but frowning upon women with educations. At the age of 16, she took up a teaching position, so she could save money for college. In 1839, Lucy enrolled at Mount Holyoke but she was forced to withdraw after she had to return home to help care for her ill sister. In 1843, she enrolled at Oberlin College, in Ohio. Though the school was a more progressive institution, Lucy was barred from pursuing her passion for public speaking. Upon her graduation in 1847, she turned down the "privilege" of writing a graduation speech that would be read by a man.
As she was almost 30 when she graduated from college, Lucy's career prospects seemed bleak because there were also so few jobs available to women. She was eventually hired by the prominent abolitionist , William Lloyd Garrison to work for his organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society. Lucy wrote & delivered speeches, at the same time she became active in the women's rights movement. Like her fellow abolitionists, Lucy was often harassed & on at least one occasion, physically attacked by a mob. Although faced with such adversity, Lucy was such a popular speaker, she soon began out-earning many male speakers.
In 1850, 2 years after the Seneca Falls Women's Convention, Lucy organized the first national Women's Rights Convention in, Worcester, Massachusetts. Her speech was even reprinted in various international publications. Over the next 5 years, Lucy travelled all over the US & Canada giving lectures. In the mean time, she also attended several women's conventions & presided over the 7th National Women's Rights Convention. It was also around this time she met Henry Blackwell, who was the brother of the physicians Elizabeth & Emily Blackwell; who were the 1st 2 women to receive medical degrees in the US. He convinced Lucy to marry him with the promise they would be equal partners in the marriage. Their 1855 marriage vows which were meant to be published, removed the common reference to "wifely obedience" & instead included a stance against marital law. Lucy also set a new precedent by keeping her maiden name. While living in New Jersey, she gave birth to 2 children, though the youngest didn't survive. Her surviving child, Alice Stone Blackwell followed in her parents footsteps & became a feminist & abolitionist.
Lucy set another precedent in 1858, when she made another proclamation, "no taxation without representation". Her refusal to pay property taxes led to the confiscation & selling of the Stone-Blackwell's belongings. At the end of the Civil War, Lucy went to Kansas to contribute to the petition for the vote for women. She also served as president of the New Jersey Women Suffrage Association & helped establish the New England branch, which she would be active with after her family moved to Boston, in 1869. By this time, Lucy was also serving on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association.
In 1869, Lucy parted ways with fellow suffragists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, amoung others, due to differences in views of the 14th & 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which granted black men the right to vote but not women. Lucy supported the amendments as she felt they helped further her abolitionist cause, while she worked simultaneously for the woman's rights cause. Stanton & Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) & Lucy, Julia Ward Howe & others established the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Lucy was the editor for the AWSA's weekly newsletter, the Woman's Journal. In 1879, she registered to vote in Massachusetts since women were permitted to vote in some local elections, but her name was removed from the roster as she didn't use her husband's surname.
In 1890, AWSA & NWSA were merged; Lucy's daughter, Alice & Stanton's daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch played important roles in helping to reconcile their mothers differences. Lucy Stone gave her final speech in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition. She died later that year on October 18, aged 75.
Side notes:
Congregational Church- a group of Protestants who traced their roots back to Puritanism which believed in a personal experience of the "salvation of Christ". These churches also encouraged the independence of each church.
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/lucy-stone
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We Won't Stay Silent
Non-Fiction"We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational and so disciplined they can be free" ...
