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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the origins of the first women's rights convention held at Seneca Falls, NY during the summer of 1848. Taxation without representation was one of the foundations that the Continental Congress used as a basis for Independence from England. But when the revolution ended and the Republic was formed, the United States adopted many English laws and traditions regarding the status of women. Women, who were citizens or could be naturalized, were left civically invisible by the code of laws (coverture) once they married. They were not able to own property, form contracts, sue or be sued. In essence, they were "covered" by their husbands under coverture. Single women who owned property or inherited property were subject to taxation, though they had no voice in the elective franchise. Therefore, women, both married and single, who were counted for legislative purposes, were given no voice in choosing their government representatives. I conclude that there were three bases for women's rights: equity, Republican Motherhood, and women's organizations. The legal concept of equity, the domestic ideology of Republican Motherhood combined with the social model of women's organizations formed the earliest foundation of what would become the first feminist movement, leading directly to the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls in 1848. Through an analysis of the changes in women's property ownership to the enhancement of the female domestic role in the early nineteenth century, women challenged their place in the public sphere. The sisterhood that was created as a result of the new domestic ideology and improved female education led to the creation of organizations to improve women's place in society. Through an almost fifty year evolution, the earliest women's volunteer organizations became the mid-nineteenth century reform organizations, leading to a campaign for woman's suffrage.

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Thesis advisor: Cynthia L. Lyerly / This thesis analyzes the evolution of Abigail Adams's republican thought throughout the course of her life. The transition from a traditional wife of a local lawyer to an articulate and well-informed First Lady can be traced along with the increasing personal hardships she faced in light of the events of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. Her unique relationship to men leading the Revolution and her own intellectual curiosity led her to a sophisticated understanding of republicanism and a unique interpretation of women's important contributions to the new nation. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

The methodological approach used to tell the Smith sisters’ story is first and foremost a case study of women in the nineteenth century and the gendered categories that were constructed to define women. The story will be told through a biographical narrative, which will allow Hannah, Julia, and Abby Smith’s to tell their story in their own voice. Also, included within the biography is an examination of the nineteenth-century theories that defined women’s lives, and what effect, if any, these theories had on the Smiths. Each chapter is layered with three different narratives in an attempt to unravel the world that women lived in the nineteenth century. First, the chapter provides a description and analysis of the specific theories such as Republican Motherhood and cult of domesticity to ground the Smith women in the discursive world in which they lived. Then the chapter closely examines the practice or the way the Smith women lived their lives and what they thought about their world. Lastly, each chapter explores the secondary sources that have been written about each subject, such as the new female seminaries that opened in the nineteenth century. By combining these approaches, I hope to avoid some of the shortcomings that dominate the study of women today. First, the theoretical models and the study of real lives of women actually leave women out of their own stories. Second, historians tend to evaluate women’s lives from the past based upon their own political agendas and their own beliefs of what freedom and rights mean completely discarding what it might have meant to women in their own time period.

In 1816 a group of white, affluent women in Natchez, Mississippi founded the Female Charitable Society, one of many ladies' associations in the early republic devoted to the care of poor and orphaned children. Born during a pervasive evangelical awakening, the Society established a charity school then, after a few years, constructed an orphan asylum. In doing so, benevolent women created not only a shelter for parentless boys and girls but a "civic household" of which they served as a collective head. Supported by charitable contributions rather than tax revenue, the orphan asylum functioned as a model environment, one that would rear prepubescent white children to be moral and industrious in trades that befit their born condition. The asylum also represented an opportunity for personal spiritual renewal on the part of donors as well as a landmark of municipal refinement. By promoting themselves as the natural caretakers of poor young children and fostering a culture of sympathy for them, benevolent women challenged the primacy of the statutory system of juvenile relief, which dated back to the earliest days of colonial settlement. Gradually, the Female Charitable Society raised the standard of relief for prepubescent indigent minors, diverted them from bound apprenticeship, wrested jurisdiction over them from male county officials, and gathered them into the household. The female-run orphan asylum largely supplanted apprenticeship as the preferred system of juvenile relief in Natchez, mirroring developments in other cities around the country. This study investigates why and how the orphan asylum emerged as a prominent form of juvenile relief in the United States. Using Natchez as a case study, this work underscores the role of benevolent women in effecting concrete transformations within the community as well as the impact of changes in domestic familial relations on child welfare. This study also expands the notion of "republican motherhood" to include "civic motherhood," that is, the public cultivation of maternal authority over poor children. Members of the Natchez Female Charitable Society positioned themselves as the rightful guardians of white, indigent boys and girls and was eventually granted legal authority over them by the State of Mississippi. / text

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