Lucretia Mott?
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“TRUTH FOR AUTHORITY, NOT AUTHORITY FOR TRUTH”1 [JOIN THE LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT PROJECT AT HTTP://WWW.MOTT.POMONA.EDU] 1. Class, for extra credit, you can write a short essay on the issue, Who was it who insisted that “The Great Spirit of the Indian, the Quaker’s ‘Inward Light’ of George Fox, the ‘Blessed Mary, Mother of Jesus’ of the Catholics, or Brahma, the Hindoo’s God — they will all be one, and there will come to be such faith and such liberty as shall redeem the world” — was it Henry David Thoreau or was it Friend Lucretia Mott? Mott was related to Benjamin Franklin John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Adams, and Octavius Brooks Frothingham. HDT WHAT? INDEX LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT FRIEND LUCRETIA GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1793 January 3, Thursday: On Nantucket Island, Friend Lucretia Coffin received her membership in the Religious Society of Friends (that is, she was born on this date as a “birthright” member of a Quaker family). A native of the Island of Nantucket, — of the Coffins and Macys on the father’s side, and of the Folgers on the mother’s; through them related to Dr. Franklin. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Born in 1793. During childhood was made actively useful to my mother, who, in the absence of my father, on a long voyage, was engaged in mercantile business, often going to Boston and purchasing goods in exchange for oil and candles, the staple of the island. The exercise of women’s talents in this line, as well as the general care which devolved upon them in the absence of their husbands, tended to develop their intellectual powers and strengthen them mentally and physically. LUCRETIA MOTT AN 1884 BIOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND LUCRETIA LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM June: Friend Elias Hicks of Long Island visited the monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends on Nantucket Island.2 This was part of Friend Elias’s 14th ministry journey. That summer he was traveling with the young James Mott, Jr., future bridegroom of the newborn Lucretia Coffin. LUCRETIA MOTT On this long journey, he had gone from the Jericho meetinghouse on Paumanok Long Island (still extant, pictured above) across the sound to Port Chester meeting, up the Connecticut shore to Stamford meeting, on up the shore to Stonington meeting, into Rhode Island to the Westerly meeting, up to the meetings in and around Providence and Taunton, back down and round through the Newport meeting and the New Bedford, Massachusetts meeting to the Falmouth meeting, and at this point out to the meeting on Nantucket Island. He would continue back up across Cape Cod to the Sandwich meeting and on up along the South Shore to the Scituate meeting, and on to the Boston area and the Salem meeting, and north to the Newburyport, Massachusetts and Hampton and Dover, New Hampshire meetings, and on to the Portland ME meeting, and beyond that crossing the “great river Kennebeck” twice and reaching to the Fairfield and Winthrop meetings, and then the Pittsfield, New Hampshire meeting, and then back down into Massachusetts and to Boston, visiting again some meetings already preached at and attending New England Yearly Meeting, and then striking west presumably through Concord, over to the North Adams meeting in the north-west corner of 2. Other famous-name visitors to Nantucket Island: John Easton, former Rhode Island deputy governor, Metacom, sachem of the Wampanoag, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT FRIEND LUCRETIA GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM Massachusetts, and up through Vermont to the Sharon, Hanover, and Vergennes meetings, and up across Lake Champlain to the Grand Isle meeting, and then back down through Vergennes again to the meetings in Saratoga and Albany and Hudson NY, and then back home to Jericho by way of the Brooklyn meeting of New-York. Total mileage they would put on their horses during this traveling season: 2,283 miles. During this absence his child Sarah would be born, and the two traveling ministers by November had spoken at about 123 meetings. It was at some point during this year that Friend Elias’s young orphaned relative, Edward Hicks who had been taken into the Quaker household of David and Elizabeth Lewis Twining, having reached the age of 13, was being put out as an apprentice to the Tomlinson brothers, coachmakers in Attleborough. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND LUCRETIA LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1804 The Coffin family of Friends relocated from Nantucket Island to Boston: In 1804 my father’s family removed to Boston, and in the public and private schools of that city I mingled with all classes without distinction. My parents were of the Religious Society of Friends, and endeavored to preserve in their children the peculiarities of that sect, as well as to instill its more important principles. My father had a desire to make his daughters useful. LUCRETIA MOTT HDT WHAT? INDEX LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT FRIEND LUCRETIA GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1805 Friend Lucretia Coffin began her career (first as student, then as teacher) at the coeducational boarding school3 at Nine Partners northeast of Poughkeepsie, New York, Friend Elias being one of the partners and a frequent visiting speaker, ELIAS HICKS and Friend James Mott, Jr. being one of the teachers. 3. Even as late as 1857, even as libertarian a person as Walt Whitman would be using his editorial privileges at the Brooklyn Daily Times to urge the parents of daughters to “Educate them at home” rather than in such schools, in order to avoid the “thousand evil influences” to which girls are inherently so much more susceptible. Our father Walt Whitman, despite his self- advertisements and the dogmatic insistences of our contemporary gays, seems to have embraced only himself. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND LUCRETIA LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM At fourteen years of age I was placed with a younger sister, at the Friends’ Boarding-School, in Dutchess County, State of New York; and continued there for more than two years without returning home. At fifteen, one of the teachers was leaving the school, I was chosen as an assistant, in her place. Pleased with the promotion, I strove hard to give satisfaction, and was gratified, on leaving the school, to have an offer of a situation as teacher, if I was disposed to remain, and informed that my services should entitle another sister to her education without charge. My father was, at that time, in successful business in Boston; but with his views of the importance of training a woman to usefulness, he and my mother gave their consent to another year being devoted to that institution. LUCRETIA MOTT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT FRIEND LUCRETIA GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1807 From Long Island, the daughters of Friend Elias Hicks, Elizabeth, age 16, and Sarah, age 14, went to Nine Partners school and there became friends with Friend Lucretia Coffin, age 15. LUCRETIA MOTT At this point in his spiritual journey, Hicks was being led, in a clear manner, to show the ground from whence all darkness and unbelief proceeded; that it was from a want of due attention to, and right belief in, the inward manifestation of divine light, which reveals itself in the heart of man against sin and uncleanness; and at the same time shows what is right, and justifies for right doing. Therefore while men disregard this inward divine principle, of grace and truth, and do not believe in it, as essential and sufficient to salvation; they are in danger of becoming ... so blinded as not to believe in ... the very essential doctrines of perfection, as contained in the clear, rational, and positive injunction of our dear Lord; Be ye therefore perfect.... It is by obedience to this inward light only, that we are prepared for an admittance into the heavenly kingdom. Friend Lucretia’s take on these youthful years would be: HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND LUCRETIA LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM At fourteen years of age I was placed with a younger sister, at the Friends’ Boarding-School, in Dutchess County, State of New York; and continued there for more than two years without returning home. At fifteen, one of the teachers was leaving the school, I was chosen as an assistant, in her place. Pleased with the promotion, I strove hard to give satisfaction, and was gratified, on leaving the school, to have an offer of a situation as teacher, if I was disposed to remain, and informed that my services should entitle another sister to her education without charge. My father was, at that time, in successful business in Boston; but with his views of the importance of training a woman to usefulness, he and my mother gave their consent to another year being devoted to that institution. HDT WHAT? INDEX LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT FRIEND LUCRETIA GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1808 Schoolmaster Benjamin Tappan beat a student so severely that he was obliged to summon a physician. In upstate New York, Friend Lucretia Coffin became an assistant teacher at the Nine Partners school. LUCRETIA MOTT HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND LUCRETIA LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1809 Friend Lucretia Coffin became one of the regular teachers at Nine Partners. At fifteen, one of the teachers was leaving the school, I was chosen as an assistant, in her place. Pleased with the promotion, I strove hard to give satisfaction, and was gratified, on leaving the school, to have an offer of a situation as teacher, if I was disposed to remain, and informed that my services should entitle another sister to her education without charge.