Quaker women were among the organizers of the first Women’s Rights Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls and Poughkeepsie Friend Dare Thompson would have been at home among them. A long-time committed activist for equal rights (Dare’s currently the president of the League of Women Voters of the Mid-Hudson Region, lwvmidhudson.org), she attended the 176th anniversary celebration of the original Convention held at the Women’s Rights National Park (nps.gov/wori/index.htm) in Seneca Falls July 19-21 (nps.gov/wori/planyourvisit/convention-days-2024.htm).
The Convention Days 2024: Revolutionary Families program and events focused on the ways family influenced the 1848 women’s rights convention and the early women’s rights movement, as well as the ways in which the definitions of family have changed and continue to impact human rights to this day.
The Convention, the first of its kind in the United States, produced and adopted the historic Declaration of Sentiments (nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm ) that gave rise to the American women’s rights movement. The document was drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and modeled after the Declaration of Independence beginning with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal”.