MOTT, 'LUCRETIA (COFFIN) An American abolitionist and woman's rights advo eate. horn on Nantucket Island. She was edu cated in the Friends' School at Nine Partners, near Poughkeepsie. N. Y.. where she met .lames Mott whom in ISIS she married. She became prominent as a preacher in the Society of Friends and was chosen a minister. As a result of a visit to Virginia in HIS she became an ar dent advocate of emancipation. At the 'Separa tion' of IS27 which divided the Society of Friends into two hostile factions, she and her husband adhered to the liberal or Ilicksite party. In 1833 she attended as an inched guest the first convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which her husband was a member. Soon after wards she helped to organize the Female Anti Slavery Society, of which she continued one of the leaders until 1839, when it was merged in the men's organization. As the feeling against abolitionists grew in intensity, many of the more timid Quakers began to deprecate any dis cussion of slavery by one of their ministers, and even in her own meeting she was regarded with suspicion and dislike. In 1840, at the World's
Anti-Slavery Convention in London, to which both James and Lucretia Mott had been chosen delegates, the question of the equal participation of women in the proceedings of the convention came up. and after some discussion all women were excluded. It was then that Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first discussed the woman's rights movement, which they launched eight years later at a convention in Seneca Falls, N. Y. But these two movements, abolition and woman's rights, while they received the greater share of her attention, were not the only ones in which Mrs. Mott was interested, for all that promised to uplift humanity or to break the fetters of ignorance and tradition received her warmest support. Almost to the end of her life she made frequent, journeys to visit distant meet ings or to attend conventions called to consider the elevation of woman, the promotion of tem perance, and the establishment of universal peace. Consult "Hallowell, The Life and Letters of James and Lueretia Mott (Boston, 1884).