who is best known for organizing a women's rights conference in seneca falls
Seneca Falls Convention After Quaker worship on Sunday July 9, 1848, Lucretia Coffin Mott joined Mary Ann M'Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright (Mott's witty sister, several months pregnant),[24] Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Jane Hunt for tea at the Hunt home in Waterloo. The two eldest M'Clintock daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Ann, Jr. may have accompanied their mother.[25] Jane Hunt had given birth two weeks earlier, and was tending the baby at home. Over tea, Stanton, the only non-Quaker present, vented a lifetime's worth of pent-up frustration, her "long-accumulating discontent"[26] about women's subservient place in society. The five women decided to hold a women's rights convention in the immediate future, while the Motts were still in the area,[2] and drew up an announcement to run in the Seneca County Courier. The announcement began with these words: "WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.â€”A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".[2] The notice specified that only women were invited to the first day's meetings on July 19, but both women and men could attend on the second day to hear Lucretia Mott speak, among others.[2] On July 11, the announcement first appeared, giving readers just eight days' notice until the first day of convention.[27] Other papers such as Douglass's North Star picked up the notice, printing it on July 14.[2] The meeting place was to be the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel[28] in Seneca Falls. Built by a congregation of abolitionists and financed in part by Richard Hunt,[12] the chapel had been the scene of many reform lectures, and was considered the only large building in the area that would open its doors to a women's rights convention.[2]
Feminism in Canada The first wave of feminism in Canada occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This early activism was focused on increasing women’s role in public life, with goals including women’s suffrage, increased property rights, increased access to education, and recognition as “persons” under the law.[1] This early iteration of Canadian feminism was largely based in maternal feminism; the idea that women are natural caregivers and “mothers of the nation” who should participate in public life because of their perceived propensity for decisions that will result in good care of society.[2] In this view, women were seen to be a civilizing force on society – which was a significant part of women’s engagement in missionary work and in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).[1]