Friends of Womens Rights

The Birth of Women's Rights

Nestled in the quaint Upstate New York town of Seneca Falls is one of America's most important landmarks - The Women's Rights National Historical Park. Created by an Act of Congress in 1980, the Park celebrates the First Woman's Rights Convention held in July of 1848 as well as to honor the early leaders of this struggle for equal rights for women in the United States.

Held at Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, the Convention generated the Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled after the Declaration of Independence that identified women's issues. Viable solutions were also outlined within this document, and seventy-two years later they would become a part of history as the 19th Amendment of the Constitution was passed giving women the right to vote.

The First Convention

There is precious little remaining from the First Woman's Rights Convention on July 19 and 20, 1848. Only the skeletal remains of the Wesleyan Chapel mark the location. They form the focus for Women's Rights National Historical Park.

The original drafts of Declaration of Sentiments, which catalyzed the Women's Rights Movement, have disappeared. It was fortuitous that Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and former slave, attended the convention in Seneca Falls and produced a pamphlet to report it's proceedings. Only a few copies of Report of the Woman's Rights Convention of 1848, remain - one is reproduced for Friends on this web site. The pamphlet is the only preserved record of the Declaration of Sentiments. This Declaration was written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and patterned on the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Sentiments created a sensation because it called for women's right to vote. This led to the Women's Suffrage Movement and provided the focus for women's rights for the next 70 years. The Convention had achieved Stanton's main objective:

"The First Step in progress is taken." She told a friend.