Getting Acquainted with First-Wave Feminists

In late March, we returned to Seneca Falls, still a town steeped in Women's History and related activism. We had visited the National Women's Hall of Fame a couple years ago, but this time we wanted to see the Women's Rights National Historical Park. It was an exciting trip! The Hall of Fame has not yet moved into its new large home in the old Seneca Knitting Mill, an 1844 building that is the focus of renovation and its ongoing fundraising campaign.

A centerpiece at the Visitor Center is the First Wave Statue Exhibit
in the lobby, with life-size bronze statues of the five organizers and
several supporters, including Frederick Douglass. 

The park is focused on a large visitor center, the former Wesleyan Methodist Church, that houses wonderful exhibits on early women's suffrage and related issues. The church was the site of the 1848 Women's Convention. The exhibits take a broad approach, emphasizing connections early suffrage efforts had to other movements of the time— abolition, child labor, temperance, equality, fair pay, gender roles— and the diversity of people involved. A staircase to the upper floor is dedicated to examples of "women's work" and accomplishments, from domestic arts (knitting, hair art) to construction and mountain climbing.

The five women who organized the first Women's Rights Convention are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary Ann M'Clintock. (Say their names!) About 300 people attended the convention; Stanton wrote the draft of the "Declaration of Sentiments," which was signed by 68 women and 32 men. It only took another 72 years for (white) women to be granted the right to vote when the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920.

Signs in a storefront in Seneca Falls, NY.

Although main street was quiet on this weekday early in the season, Seneca Falls has not lost its enthusiasm for activism. In January 2017, the town attracted an estimated 10,000 people to that year's Women's March; a followup event in 2018 was smaller but equally enthusiastic, I'm sure. Shortly before our visit, the town hosted a march and rally in solidarity with the #NeverAgain movement for gun control.

The moral of our very moving visit?

VOTE!!