Early Influences
Lucretia Mott’s career was
spurred onward by her childhood experiences and her religious devotion. Mott was born in January of 1793 in
Nantucket, Massachusetts.[1] This was a whaling industry community in
which men were gone for long periods of time; as a result, women were left in
charge of community businesses and of the families.[2] So here was a community in which women
played a vital role, a situation not common during this time in history. Mott further witnessed women as imperative
parts of community because her family and community were of the Quaker
faith. Quakers were radical Puritans
who believed that everyone was equal under God, even blacks and women,
and that this equality included equal protection by the laws.[3] As a result of this egalitarian belief,
Quaker women were encouraged to share their faith in public alongside men,
Quaker boys and girls were educated together, and Quaker women were instructed
in the administration of church affairs.[4]
With such influences and opportunities laid before her during her childhood,
Mott was quick to take advantage of her equal status with men, acquire
leadership ability, and develop a responsible nature. At age twenty-one she became a lay minister, which was a
non-paying position.[5] She already had the servant’s spirit in
her. At age twenty-eight she was an
ordained minister.[6]
As a minister, Mott further
gained a reputation as a capable female servant. In one of her sermons, “Likeness to Christ,” she expounds the
necessity of action. “It is time that
Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of
Christ.”[7] Mott was advocating following Jesus Christ’s
ministry works, which she herself was doing in her efforts to help blacks and
women. The simple fact that Quaker
women were allowed to become ministers influenced her to fight for the rights of
the majority of women who did not have those opportunities. But what also made her fight for the rights
of women was the fact that some Quakers were beginning to turn away from this
equality for men and women and that women were losing some of their freedoms.[8] The fact that even she was losing
rights in her egalitarian community scared Mott, for in this Quaker family she
had at least been sure of her equality.
The Quaker belief in
egalitarianism made Quakers tolerant of everyone and opposed to such evils as
slavery and capital punishment.[9] Just as Mott demonstrated in her “Likeness
to Christ” sermon, her Quaker friends were servants for Christ. In their efforts to eradicate the evils of
society, they worked to reform mental hospitals, prisons, and education for the
poor and were a factor in the 1807 end to the slave trade.[10] With the slave trade now eradicated, Quakers
set out to have slavery abolished, at all costs. In efforts to do so, many Quakers broke laws in order to help
with the Underground Railroad, when they had never thought of breaking laws
before.[11] Just as her Quaker background set her in the
path of the women’s rights movement, so did it set her in the path of
abolitionism.
This page was created by Leah Aubrey.
mailto:laubrey0@georgetowncollege.edu
This page was last updated 2/23/01.
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