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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth.

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A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women's rights in the nineteenth century. Learn more at womenshistory.org.

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What Happened at the Seneca Falls Convention? | History

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This Place in History: Emma Willard in Middlebury

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"Go where no one else will go. Do what no one else will do."

- Mary Lyon

Mary Lyon was a pioneering educator of women. In 1837 she founded Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which Emily Dickinson attended in 1847-48. Lyon was born in Buckland, Massachusetts, on February 28, 1797. She was one of seven children born to Aaron Lyon, a Scottish farmer, and Jemima Shepherd Lyon. Mary Lyon attended Buckland School from the age of four until she was thirteen, often boarding with local families since it was too far to travel home each day.

When Lyon was seventeen, she was invited to teach summer school in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. At that time teachers often entered the workforce with few formal qualifications. For twenty years Lyon continued her teaching career at several schools, including Ipswich Female Seminary, which Lavinia Dickinson later attended. While teaching, Lyon used her income and a small inheritance to further her education by traveling and studying educational reform.

In 1834 Lyon decided to leave teaching in order to raise funds for a female seminary accessible to women of modest means. Lyon conceived of a seminary founded on the principles of public benevolence, as opposed to the customary practice of funding by a wealthy benefactor. She tirelessly traveled the country collecting donations in a green velvet purse. She made a special request of church sewing societies throughout New England to contribute quilts and bedding that would furnish a chamber for each student. To keep tuition low, seminary students would live together as a family in one large building and would do much of the school's housework (cleaning, cooking, and laundering).

On November 8, 1837, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary admitted its first eighty students. Mary Lyon had high academic standards for her students. An admirer of the Amherst College curriculum, she developed a rigorous course of study that included the sciences, not a subject commonly emphasized at men's or women's schools. She also tirelessly worked to improve the students' religious lives, holding year-long revivals intended to culminate in each student's personal confession of faith.

Emily Dickinson entered the seminary in 1847, a decade after its founding. Writing her friend Abiah Root, Dickinson observed that the atmosphere at the seminary was congenial. "One thing is certain," she wrote, "& that is, that Miss Lyon & all the teachers, seem to consult our comfort & happiness in everything they do & you know that is pleasant" (L18). Like many of the students, she stayed for only one year; unlike most of them, she remained one of those "without hope" where faith was concerned.

Mary Lyon pursued her mission to educate women until her death on April 5, 1849. Educators later viewed Mount Holyoke as a model for women's education. In 1893, the seminary became Mount Holyoke College. Lyon's gravesite is on the College grounds. Mary Lyon's legacy is celebrated at her graveside during the annual Mount Holyoke College commencement ceremony and every year on her birthday.

Further Reading

Green, Elizabeth Alden. Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: Opening the Gates. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1979.
Mount Holyoke College History: Who Was Mary Lyon?

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Mary Lyon Mary Lyon was a pioneering educator of women. In 1837 she founded Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which Emily Dickinson attended in 1847-48. Lyon was born in Buckland, Massachusetts, on February 28, 1797. She was one of seven children born to Aaron Lyon, a Scottish farmer, and Jemima Shepherd Lyon.

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Angelina Grimke Weld (1805-1879) date of image is unknown.
Library of Congress

The sisters' conversion to Quakerism and subsequent move to Philadelphia made them virtual outcasts in the South, but they also found themselves at odds with many northerners after William Lloyd Garrison published a personal letter Angelina wrote to him in The Liberator. In her letter Angelina encouraged Garrison to stand his ground even in the face of mob violence: "If persecution is the means which God has ordained for the accomplishment of this great end, emancipation, then...I feel as if I could say, let it come; for it is my deep, solemn deliberate conviction, that this is a cause worth dying for...." Angelina chose not to recall the letter despite the outrage it caused among fellow Quakers who believed she was a radical abolitionist. Despite the disapproval they faced from fellow Quakers and from a society that did not accept women as public speakers on such controversial topics as slavery, the Grimke sisters found themselves caught up in the antislavery movement.

In 1836 Angelina wrote her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South imploring white southern women to embrace the antislavery cause. She wrote, "I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do; and if you really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mistaken." Her writing drew the ire of southerners who opposed its abolitionist message and northerners who felt that women had no business writing or speaking about something as controversial as slavery. This outcry over women abolitionists prompted Sarah to write Letters on the Equality of the Sexes. By the late 1830s the Grimke sisters were known not only as abolitionists but also as proponents of women's rights.

Although Sarah and Angelina did not attend the First Woman's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls in 1848, Sarah received an invitation to the event from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as evidenced by this letter to Elizabeth M'Clintock:
Grassmere [Seneca Falls] Friday morning [14? July 1848] Dear Lizzie, Rain or shine I intend to spend Sunday with you that we may all together concoct a declaration I have drawn up one but you may suggest any alterations & improvements for I know it is not as perfect a declaration as should go forth from the first woman's rights convention that has ever assembled. I shall take the ten o'clock train in the morning & return at five in the evening, provided we can accomplish all our business in that time. I have written to Lydia Maria Child Maria Chapman & Sarah Grimke, as we hope for some good letters to read at the convention. Your friend
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Stantons were good friends of the Grimkes: Elizabeth's husband Henry served as best man at the wedding of Angelina Grimke and Theodore Weld, sent their oldest sons to the Grimke-Weld boarding school, and, in honor of Angelina's husband, named their fourth son Theodore Weld Stanton.

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Grimke Sisters - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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The sisters' conversion to Quakerism and subsequent move to Philadelphia made them virtual outcasts in the South, but they also found themselves at odds with many northerners after William Lloyd Garrison published a personal letter Angelina wrote to him in The Liberator.

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From the Lowell factory workers to the feminized role of the American schoolteacher, women began to make professional strides during the first half of the 19th century.

Industrialization in the early 1800s began drawing white Northeastern women out of the home and into the factory and schoolhouse. Particularly notable were the women who worked at the Lowell Mills in Massachusetts.

While many women worked for wages, others remained at home and professionalized the job of homemaker as part of the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity.

African American women in the South remained enslaved during this period, and were afforded none of the benefits of the cult of domesticity or independent labor. Native American women coped with increasingly precarious labor as Indian Removal and Manifest Destiny continued to push them farther west.

From artisans to factory workers

During the 17th and 18th centuries, artisans-skilled, experienced craft workers-produced goods by hand. But when President Jefferson embargoed British manufactured goods from late 1807 to early 1809 to protect US production, New England merchants began to invest in industrial enterprises similar to those of the British to replace the banned markets. By 1812, 78 new textile mills had been built in rural New England towns.

Workers were organized the way that they had been in English factories, in family units. Under this system, named the Rhode Island system after where it began, the father was placed in charge of the family unit, and he directed the labor of his wife and children, oftentimes outside of the factory itself. This was commonly known as the "putting-out system." For example, a factory owner might give a worker ten yards of fabric and demand five shirts by the end of the week. The worker would make buttons, his kids would cut the fabric, and his wife would sew.

The Lowell girls

Francis Cabot Lowell, an American businessman, began to reform the manufacturing industry by hiring women and creating a centralized workplace. Lowell founded the Boston Manufacturing Company in 1813, building a few mills, the most famous of which was in Lowell, Massachusetts-a town that was named after Lowell himself. In contrast to many smaller mills, the Boston Associates' enterprises avoided the Rhode Island system, preferring individual workers to families. These employees were not difficult to find. While young men could work at a variety of occupations, young white women had fewer options and more experience working with textiles. The Boston Manufacturing Company preferred this system since the women could be easily managed and restricted while living and working on factory grounds.

Needing to reassure anxious white parents that their daughters' virtues would be protected from the problems of industrialization-filth and vice-the Boston Associates established strict rules governing the lives of these young workers. The women lived in boarding houses, woke early at the sound of a bell, and worked a 12-hour day during which talking was forbidden. They could not swear or drink alcohol, and they were required to attend church.

Women's work experience

The women working for the Boston Associates were expected to report early in the morning and to work all day. They could not leave when they were tired or take breaks other than at designated times. Those who arrived late found their pay docked; five minutes' tardiness could result in several hours' worth of lost pay. The monotony of repetitive tasks made days feel particularly long. Most factory employees toiled 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week.

Work was not only tiresome, but also dangerous. The presence of cotton bales alongside the oil used to lubricate machines made fire a common problem in textile factories. Workers' hands and fingers were maimed or severed when they were caught in machines; in some cases, their limbs or entire bodies were crushed. Workers who didn't die from such injuries almost certainly lost their jobs, and no compensation was provided.

Overseers kept a paternalistic eye on the young women's behavior and oftentimes fired or evicted women for failing to meet quotas. Corporal punishment was common in factories. Where abuse was most extreme, children sometimes died as a result of injuries suffered at the hands of an overseer.

Women workers and the labor movement

Many workers undoubtedly enjoyed some of the new wage opportunities factory work presented. For many of the young white women in New England, the experience of being away from the family was exhilarating and provided a sense of solidarity among the workers. Though most sent a large portion of their wages home, women having even a small amount of money of their own was a liberating experience, and many used their earnings to purchase clothes and other consumer goods for themselves.

The long hours, strict discipline, and low wages, however, soon led workers to organize to protest their working conditions and pay. In 1821, the young women employed by the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham went on strike for two days when their wages were cut.

In the 1830s, the female workers in Lowell formed the Lowell Factory Girls Association to organize strike activities in the face of wage cuts; they later established the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association to protest the 12-hour workday. The organization also put out a regular newspaper detailing their negative work experiences. Even though strikes were rarely successful, women initiated work stoppages as a form of labor protest, taking groundbreaking political action in the public sphere.

Homemakers and schoolteachers

While industrialization led to radical changes in female American life, many white women elected to stay at home and began to glorify the profession of a housewife. This became known as the cult of domesticity-the philosophy that women retained serious power by controlling the household. However, the idealized notion that women had more autonomy in their job selection, even if they were homemakers, excluded many middle-class women who were restricted to the domestic sphere.

Catharine Beecher, an early feminist, also suggested that women were uniquely able to educate. Women were seen as the moral compasses of the family and were therefore expected to teach the way of the world to the children. As the teaching profession became "feminized," men fled from schoolhouses and women took over. Both within the mills and the schools, women celebrated the idea of "household smarts" which were necessary to succeed in such workplaces. They ultimately leveraged their power in the home, factory, and schools to gain public attention in the first women's rights movement.

Minority women's work in the era of slavery and Indian Removal

Enslaved women in the South were stripped of their motherhood identity in order to work the fields of plantations for no wages. Paradoxically, they were still required to do female domestic duties, like cooking and cleaning, as well. Furthermore, women were used to propagate a slaveowner's economic assets by having children that would be born into slavery under the slaveowner's jurisdiction. Enslaved women gave birth to their first child at the average age of nineteen; oftentimes their children were fathered by their owner. For example, historians agree that Thomas Jefferson had children with his slave, Sally Hemings.

Meanwhile, Native American women were pushed westward by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Native American women had to harvest and produce hides for trade with encroaching explorers from the East.

What do you think?

How was the labor movement connected to the first women's rights movement?

How did race determine the professional options of women in the early 1800s?

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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The Cult of Domesticity | PBS LearningMedia

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Learn about the cult of domesticity, a 19th-century ideology that expected middle- and upper-class women to devote themselves to their home life by obeying their husbands, raising their children, and managing all aspects of the home. While many women subscribed to this school of thought, others spoke out against the lack of rights that women had.