Lucy Stone’s determined vision for girls’ and women’s equality was incubated in her home at this site. As a young girl, she resented her mother’s life of drudgery and lack of respect, helped with the housework, and resolved to change the way women were treated. An independent thinker from her earliest days, she rejected the belief that women must submit to their husbands’ rule. When her father refused to pay for her schooling as he had for her brothers, she earned her own way through high school and college. In this neighborhood she observed the attitudes of friends and relatives toward females and began a lifelong quest for equal rights for women, including their earnings and property, their persons, and their vote. She wanted women to become more than chattels of their husbands. She traveled far and wide from this place, speaking, writing, and organizing for women’s suffrage, but the scenery of her childhood always remained dear to her heart.

Photo: from Wikipedia

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner