What About the Ladies?

Frances Dana Gage was an influential person in the women's rights movement as well as the temperance and anti-slavery movements in Ohio. After the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848 a number of women including Gage became intersted in women's rights. Several women'c conferences were held in Ohio in 1850 in the months leading up to the state constitutional convention. Frances Gage presided over one of these conferences and she worked to collect petitions asking the constitutional convention to give women the right to vote. In the early 1850s, Gage continued to work for women's rights and led another convention in Akron on May 29 1851. It was at that conference that Sojourner Truth a former slave delivered her famous Ain't I a Woman speech. Gage also served as president of a convention in Cleveland in 1853.

Lucy Stone, a prominent suffragist was present at the National Women's Rights Convention held in Cleveland. She spoke out for women's rights and was a strong abolitionist as well. She was born in Massachusetts and was the first woman from her home state to earn a college degree. She earned her dergee from Oberlin College the country's first college to admit both women and African Americans.After attending Oberlin College for four years, she graduated with honors. She was selected by a vote of her classmates to write a commencement speech for the class. She petitioned the college to deliver the speech herself but the petition was refused by the Ladies' Board on the grounds that it was improper for a woman to speak infront of both men and women.Stone soon returned to Massachusetts and began teaching. In 1847 she was approached by William Lloyd Garrison about becoming an agent for his abolition society. In 1848 she was hired and began earning six dollars a week as a lecturer and organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston.

This pamphlet from the National Women's Rights Convention held in Cleveland addressed a variety of issues that women faced in the nineteenth century. Women like Frances Gage, and even men attended this conference to discuss issues such as equal access to education, and employment reform of laws governing marriage and divorce. Other topics of discussion at the convention dealt with prostitution, temperance and women's right to vote.

This page of the pamphlet lists the individuals present at the National Women's Rights Convention. It also lists each person's office held at the conference. It is amazing to note that significant individuals such as Lucy Stone and Lucretia Mott were present at the Cleveland convention.