On this day in ...... 1818, Lucy Stone was born, the 8th of 9 children, into a poor farm family in Brookline, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at age 16, and did so in between college-level studies, becoming the 1st Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree when she was graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio at age 29. By this time Stone was an activist for women's rights and against slavery; her work aided passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as suffrage laws in many states. She was a close ally of foremothers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Before her death in Boston at age 75, Stone would campaign for temperance, for less restrictive women's clothing (welcoming the advent of bloomers, above left (credit)), and for reform in social mores and family law (keeping her own name after marriage).
(Prior August 13 posts are here, here, and here.)
