Blackwell Family               
Lucy Stone Blackwell    

Biographical Papers 

Sketch of Lucy S.
Blackwell by
Alice Stone BlackwellAsB               LS
Biog sketch of 
Lucy Stone written
in 1945 when
Miss B was losing
her sightWhen Lucy Stone was born, in
1818, a married woman had
hardly more rights than a
minor child. All her property
and earnings belonged to her
husband. He had the right to 
beat her, in moderation. An
English judge declared that
the beating was moderate if
given with a stick no thicker
than the judge's thumb. If
the husband died before the2
wife, he could bequeath the
children away from their mother
to strangers.
   High school and colleges were
closed to women and public 
opinion debarred them from all
but a few poorly paid occu-
pations

   Lucy Stone was the first demo-
cratic woman to take a college
degree, at Oberlin University, in
1897.  She gave her first 

3
women rights lecture in the
same year.  During the next
few years, she lectured widely throughout this great
the country, to great acclaim,
speaking both against negro
slavery and for woman's rights.
It was a novelty for a 
woman to speak in public,
and curiosity drew large
crowds.  The speaker was a 
surprise to them.  She was
a small woman, with4
gentle manner, and a remarkably
musical voice. She had
great eloquence.  Mobs would
listen to her when they
looked[?] down[?] [?] other speaker .
She had been called the morning
star of the women's rights
movement.  She converted Susan
B. Anthony and Julia Ward
Howe to women suffrage.
She headed the call[?] for
the first  National Woman's
Rights Convention, held at


5
Worcester, Mass, in 1850.
The call was signed by
a long list of distinguished
men and women.
In 1855 she married Henry
B. Blackwell.  He was in
sympathy with both the
antislavery and the woman's
rights movement.  A reward
of $10,000 had been offered
for his head, at a big 
public meeting in Memphis,
Tenn. because of his6
active part in the rescue of 
a little slave girl.  An
eminent lawyer told Lucy
Stone that there was no
law requiring a married
woman to take her husbands
name.  It was only a
custom.  She kept her  
own name, with her husbands
full approval.
    In 1870 they founded in 
Boston the Woman's Journal,

7
which was the chief journalistic
 organ of the womens'
rights movement for almost 
half a century.    H. Blackwell
gave his wife the first $1000
of the $10,000 needed to
start the paper, and she 
begged the rest.  When Alice
Stone Blackwell graduated from
Boston University in 1881, she 
began to help her parents on
the paper.  In 1883 shebecame an assistant editor 
and so continued while her
parents lived.  After their 
death she was editor  in 
chief until 1918, when the
Woman's Journal was consolidated 
with two other
woman suffrage papers to 
form the Woman Citizen
and was moved to New York.