“I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex.” - Lucy Stone
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Lucy Stone was born on August 13, 1818, to Hannah and Francis Stone. She was born on the family farm just outside of West Brookfield, Massachusetts. She was a noted human rights activist during the second half of the 1800s. She traveled the country lecturing on the abolition of slavery and on the rights of women and blacks. The right to vote (suffrage) and the abolition of slavery were the two issues that she worked hardest for. She died in 1893, 30 years after slavery was abolished in the U.S., and nearly 30 years before women would be granted the right to vote.

1818 - August 13, Lucy Stone was born.

1839 - Attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

1843 - Funded her first year at Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin was the first U.S. college to admit blacks and women.

1847 - Graduated from Oberlin College. She was the first Massachusetts’ woman to earn a college degree. Lucy Stone was asked to write the commencement speech for her graduating class. She refused because women were not allowed to gives speeches at Oberlin; a male student would have had to read it.

- Delivered her first public speech, on women’s rights, in Gardner, Massachusetts, at the Congregational Church (her brother’s church).

- Became an organizer and lecturer for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. In her lectures she spoke not just about ending slavery, but also about women’s rights. The connections she drew between racism and sexism often surprised her audiences.

1850 - Helped organize the first National Women’s Rights Convention. Lucy Stone gave a speech on women’s rights. Susan B. Anthony attributed actively joining the national women’s rights movement to this speech.

1855 - May 1, Lucy Stone married Henry B. Blackwell, a Cincinnati merchant and brother of Elizabeth Blackwell. At their wedding ceremony they read and signed a statement that included the following:

“While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.”

- Lucy became the first woman married in the U.S. to keep her maiden name. Women who kept their maiden names became known as Lucy Stoners.

1857 - Gave birth to Alice Stone Blackwell.

1858 - Lucy and Henry moved to Orange, NJ, where Lucy took up one of the early cries of the American Revolution: No taxation without representation! Her property was taxed, but, since she was a woman, she was not allowed to vote. She refused to pay her taxes. As a result, many of her belongings were seized by the government and sold at auction.

1866-1868 - Supported the ratification of the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, giving black men the right to vote. Because the wording of the amendments did not give women the right to vote, Susan B. Anthony did not support them. The suffrage campaign split into two factions over this. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led one, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell led the other.

1867-1882 - Lectured in the woman suffrage amendment campaigns.

1869 - Was one of the founders of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), along with Henry Blackwell, Thomas Higginson, and Julia Ward Howe.

1869-1889 - Chair of the executive committee of the AWSA.

1870 - Founded the “Woman’s Journal,” which became the official publication of the AWSA.

1870-1872 - Co-editor of the “Women’s Journal” with her husband Henry.

1872 - President of the AWSA.

1872-1893 - Editor-in-chief of the “Women’s Journal.”

1883 - Oberlin, which had not allowed women to give speeches while Lucy Stone was a student, invited her back as an honored speaker for the school’s 50th anniversary celebration.

1893 - October 18, Lucy Stone died at home. Her last words were to her daughter, “Make the world better.” Lucy became the first person in New England to be cremated.

Although Lucy Stone died before the women of the United States were granted the right to vote, she did live to see American slavery abolished, the rights of citizenship conferred upon former slaves, and the right to vote given to black men. She also saw Wyoming give women the vote in 1869, and Utah do the same in 1891.