Kathryn Cullen-DuPont - American Women Activists Writings: An Anthology, 1637-2001

1637

Anne Hutchinson is tried by the civil court of the Massachusetts Bay colony and convicted of traducing the ministers and their ministry.

1638

Anne Hutchinson is tried before the clergy and the church of Boston; she is convicted of heresy and excommunicated.

1775

Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John Adams, to request that he and the Continental Congress include womens rights in the new nations code of laws.

1821

Lucretia Mott is recorded as a Quaker minister.

1823

Catharine Beecher, with her sister Mary, opens what becomes the Hartford Female Seminary.

1826

Sojourner Truth escapes slavery.

1832

Maria W. Stewart delivers her first speech, at Franklin Hall, Boston.

1833

Maria W. Stewart gives her Farewell Address.

1836

Angelina Grimk writes An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South and Sarah Grimk writes an Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States.

1837

The Massachusetts clergy reads from the orthodox churchs pulpits a Pastoral Letter denouncing the Grimk sisters for speaking to mixed audiences of men and women. Catharine Beecher adds her own criticism in An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with Reference to the Duty of American Women.

Mount Holyoke Seminary, founded by Mary Lyon, opens its doors. It will become Mount Holyoke College.

1840

Elizabeth Cady Stanton accompanies her husband to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England. When female delegates are refused participation on grounds of gender, Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and other women speak of beginning a womens rights movement upon their return to the United States.

1845

Margaret Fullers Woman in the Nineteenth Century is published.

1847

Elizabeth Blackwell begins her medical training at Geneva University.

Lucy Stone graduates from Oberlin College. The colleges policy calls for the graduation speeches of female students to be read aloud on their behalf by male students. Refused permission to read her own speech, Stone insists that it remain unread.

1848

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others organize the Seneca Falls Convention, and the womens movement in the United States officially begins.

1851

Sojourner Truth delivers her speech Aint I a Woman.

The True Remedies for the Wrongs of Woman by Catharine Beecher is published.

1855

Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell marry. They use the occasion to protest the inequities in marriage law, and Lucy Stone retains her surname.

1859

Frances Ellen Watkins Harpers The Two Officers appears in the Anglo-African Magazine . It is believed to be the first short story published by an African American.

1860

The Reverend Theophilus Packard, exercising his discretion as a husband, has his wife, Elizabeth Packard, committed to the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane.

1864

At the conclusion of Packard v. Packard , Elizabeth Packard is found sane and given her liberty. She begins her campaign for legislative reform.

1869

The womens movement splits into two factions, represented by the National Woman American Suffrage Association, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone.

1870

Henry Blackwell reads Catharine Beechers statement in opposition to womens suffrage to those attending a convention of the American Woman Suffrage Association.

Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to run for election to the U.S. presidency.

1871

Anna Howard Shaw receives her license to preach in the Methodist Protestant Church.

Abigail Scott Dunniway begins publication of her suffrage newspaper The New Northwest .