LUCRETIA [

See also:

• COFFIN (from Lat. cophinus, Gr. K64wos, a coffer, chest or basket, but never meaning " coffin " in its present sense)

COFFIN]

See also:

• LUCRETIA [COFFIN] MOTT (1793–188o)
• MOTT, VALENTINE (1785–1865)

MOTT (1793–188o)  , American reformer, was born at Nantucket, Massachusetts, on the 3rd of January 1793 . She was descended on her mother's side from Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of Nantucket, and the grand-father of Benjamin Franklin; her father's ancestors, also, were among the first settlers of Nantucket . At thirteen she was sent to a Friends' boarding school, at Nine Partners, near Poughkeepsie, New York, where James Mott (1788–1868), who like her was of old Quaker stock and whom she married in 1811, was then a teacher . In 1810 James Mott entered the employ of Lucretia's father in Philadelphia, but the business was not successful and in 1817 Lucretia opened a small school under the care of the Pine Street Monthly Meeting, but gave it up a year afterwards and in the same year was recognized by the Friends as an " acknowledged minister." Her husband had as early as 1822 espoused the cause of Elias Hicks against the " Orthodox " Friends, and in 1827, when the Society divided, Lucretia joined the Hicksites . Hicks's teachings on slavery had impressed both James and Lucretia; in 1830 James gave up a lucrative cotton commission business that he might not profit from the products of slave labour; and both took an active part in the campaign against slavery . About 184o Mrs Mott also took up the cause of woman's rights . On lecturing tours she and her husband travelled as far west as Indiana and into Maryland and Virginia . In 1848 she addressed the Anti-Sabbath Convention in Boston, and with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom she had first met in London in 184o, called a convention " to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women," which met at Seneca Falls and passed a " Declaration of Sentiments," modelled on the Declaration of Independence . Her husband, who was prominent among the founders of Swarthmore College (1864), died in Brooklyn, New York, on the 26th of January 1868; and Mrs Mott died on the 1 rth of November 188o near Philadelphia . See James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters (Boston, 1884), edited by their granddaughter, Mrs Anna Davis Hallowell .