NEW LIFE FOR WESLEYAN CHAPEL The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls was sold in 1871 Over the years the building served as a garage and Laundromat In 1985 the National Park Service purchased the site Very little of the original structure remained The park service rebuilt the chapel in 2011 It opened the Women’s Rights National Historical Park on the site program included speeches by Stanton and Mott Stanton told her listeners it was wrong that women did not have suffrage or the right to vote A DECLARATION Stanton presented a document she and the other leaders had written They called it the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments The document said that all men and women were created equal It listed 18 injustices women suffered Among them was that women did not have the right to attend college Women were paid less and kept out An artist depicted Stanton speaking at the convention
PERSPECTIVES YOUNG SIGNER Nineteen-year-old Charlotte Woodward saw the announcement for the Seneca Falls Convention in the newspaper She made plans with friends to attend Woodward feared she and her friends would be the only women there They were relieved to meet plenty of other women there Woodward sat in the back row listening to the speeches and debate Then she signed the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments She was the only signer still alive in 1920 That’s the year the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote of many jobs They were denied the right to vote The Declaration also included 11 resolutions that offered solutions The next day those at the convention voted on the resolutions The most controversial was demanding the right to vote Many including Mott felt it was too soon to ask for suffrage But Stanton and others believed women could only be equal if they could vote for their own leaders In the end convention attendees voted to accept all 11
resolutions A total of 68 women and 32 men signed the Declaration BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT The Seneca Falls Convention was the first major meeting held to discuss women’s rights But it wasn’t the last After Seneca Falls women across the country became involved They worked to win the right for women to vote It would take them 72 years In the process they would change the shape of American politics EXPLORE ONLINE Chapter One covers the Seneca Falls Convention The website below provides a firsthand account of the meeting How is the information from the website the same as the information in Chapter One What new information did you learn from the website SENECA FALLS CONVENTION abdocorelibrary com womens-suffrage
