Lucy Stone
Suffragist
1818 - 1893
-Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone was the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree, taught and did housework while at Oberlin College. William Lloyd Garrison wrote, "She is a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free as the air." She married Henry Blackwell, became known for keeping own name to protest restrictive marriage laws. She had 2 children, her son died after birth.
She spoke for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights. She organized her own lectures, eloquent and sincere, led in calling the first national woman's rights convention at Worcester, MA 1850, She converted Susan B. Anthony and Julia Ward Howe to suffrage. refused to pay taxes to protest lack of represention, Lucy refused to pay property taxes because she was not permitted to vote. The tax collector did not agree and auctioned off her household furnishings to pay her taxes. Her friends and neighbors bought her things and returned them, including her baby's cradle.
She pressed for voting rights ( suffrage) both Black Americans and for women. She was the founder of American Woman Suffrage Association 1869 and the leading spirit in New England. She attempted to vote in New Jersey and was refused and she then published a pamphlet "Why Women in New Jersey Should Vote." She published and edited influential weekly The Woman's Journal with husband and later daughter for 47 years. She was the first person to be cremated in New England,
Lucy died before the passage of the 19th amendment as did Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Her dying words to daughter were, "Make the world better."
http://www.inform.umd.edu/Pictures/WomensStudies/PictureGallery/stone.html
http://home.att.net/~womensrights/stone_bio.htm