2004 by Judith Wellman
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 c p 6 5 4 3 2
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wellman, Judith.
The road to Seneca Falls : Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the
First Womans Rights Convention / Judith Wellman.
p. cm. (Women in American history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-252-02904-6 (Cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-252-07173-5 (Paper : alk. paper)
1. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 18151902.
2. Womans Rights Convention (1st : 1848 : Seneca Falls, N.Y.)
3. FeministsUnited StatesBiography.
4. Womens rightsNew York (State)Seneca FallsHistory.
I. Title. II. Series.
HQ1413.S67 W45 2004
305.42/092 B 22pcc 2003017060
ISBN 978-0-252-07173-7 (Paper : alk. paper)
To the people of Seneca Falls and Waterloo,
especially to local historians,
the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation,
the National Womens Hall of Fame,
the Seneca Falls Historical Society,
and the Womens Rights National Historical Park,
who keep the home fires burning for all of us.
And to women and men everywhere
who work toward respect for themselves,
each other, and the earth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Everything has a history, including the writing of this book. For help and support throughout this process, I owe many thanks to many people. My first appreciation goes to the keepers of the records, for without them this work would not have been possible. Thanks to librarians and archivists at the American Antiquarian Society, American Baptist Historical Society, Boston Public Library, Cornell University, Douglass College at Rutgers University, Harvard University, Haverford College, Ithaca College (especially William Siles), Johnstown Historical Society, Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Service, New Hampshire Historical Society, New York State Archives and Records Administration (especially James Foltz), New York State Library (especially James Corsaro), New York Yearly Meeting of Friends (especially Elizabeth and Roy Moger), Radcliffe, Rochester Public Library, Seneca Falls churches, Smith College, Smithsonian Institution (especially Edie Mayo), State University of New York at Oswego (where Mary Bennett and Shirley Omundsen generously helped with interlibrary loan services), Syracuse Public Library, Syracuse University, Friends Historical Library at Swathmore College (especially Bert Fowler and Christopher Densmore), University of Massachusetts (especially Pat Holland and Ann Gordon), University of Rochester (especially Mary Huth), Vassar College, and the Waterloo Library and Historical Society.
Special thanks to the Seneca Falls Historical Society and its many staff members and volunteers (including Anne Ackerson, Ann Hermann, Lisa Johnson, Philomena Cammuso, Jesse Watkins, Ethel Bishop, and Frances Barbieri) who made me feel so consistently welcome; to Betty Auten, Seneca County Historian, who generously shared her files with me; and to the many, many local historians and citizens in Seneca Falls, Waterloo, Johnstown, and central New York who took an interest in this project (including John Genung, Waterloo; Howard Van Kirk, editor of the Seneca Falls Reveille, and Lewis Decker, Fulton County historian). I hope they will consider this work a small repayment for their many kindnesses.
Particular thanks to Pat Holland, Ann Gordon, and the staff of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and later at Rutgers, with whom I spent some of the most enjoyable times of my academic career. In a labor of both scholarship and love, they have done an extraordinary job. With the assistance of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, they have created both a microfilmed edition of these papers (with fourteen thousand documents) and selected documents printed in hard copy: Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Guide and Index to the Microfilm Edition, ed. Patricia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon et al. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1991); The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, ed. Ann D. Gordon, vol. 1: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840 to 1860 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997) and vol. 2: Against an Aristocracy of Sex, 1866 to 1873 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000). These are an immeasurable gift to every scholar of U.S. history in general and of the U.S. womans rights movement in particular.
Time off from ordinary responsibilities and a chance to interact with lively colleagues are priceless gifts to any historian, and I wish to thank several institutions for providing me with these. The assistance of the National Endowment for the Humanities has been irreplaceable. With NEH support, I attended the Family and Community History Program (directed by Richard Jensen at the Newberry Library), spent a summer of research at the Newberry Library, attended a seminar on social history at Brandeis University (led by David Hackett Fischer), and received a summer fellowship for intensive writing on Seneca Falls.
The State University of New York has provided essential assistance for this project. Thanks to the University Awards Committee for funding an early stage of this research and to the State University of New York at Oswego for granting me sabbatical leaves to work on this book. No project of this size would be possible without such strong institutional support.
Thanks also to the Social Science History Association, the Organization of American Historians, the New York History Conference, the Upstate New York Womens History Organization, the Berkshire Conference on Womens History, the National Park Service, and the National Council on Public History, as well as to Brandeis, Syracuse University, and Binghamton University for opportunities to present papers.
Thanks to the New York State Historical Association for allowing me to use my article Womens Rights, Republicanism, and Revolutionary Rhetoric in Antebellum New York State, originally published in New York History (July 1988), as the basis for chapter 6 in this book.
Many thanks to superintendents and staff of the Womens Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. Judy Hart, one of the people to whom Womens Rights Park owes its very existence, became the first park superintendent and hired Corinne Guntzel and me to collect materials relating to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls. She also gave me the privilege of working with a dedicated group of rangers and volunteers as the first park historian in the summer of 1982. Linda Canzanelli, Joanne Hanley, Josie Fernandez, and Nancy E. Watts succeeded Judy Hart. Vivien Rose and Mary Ellen Snyder, Chiefs of Interpretation; Anne Derousie, Historian; and Dwight Pitcaithley, Chief Historian of the Park Service, have provided vital encouragement and dialogue.
