Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

2902 Gilbert Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45206, USA

Lat/Long

39.13143, -84.48804

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell married on May 1^st, 1855 in a ceremony that both defied 19^th-century social expectations and demonstrated the things to come for this advocate pairing. For starters, the marriage featured a protest pamphlet which opened with:

While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it our duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.

Lucy also maintained her maiden name and omitted “to obey” from the bridal vows. All of this was to protest the loss of agency and protections suffered by married women due to unjust legal restrictions.

Despite these breaks from tradition, perhaps the biggest surprise to those who knew the couple was the fact the marriage was happening at all. Reportedly, Stone had made it clear in her early life she did not wish to marry given the previously mentioned constraints. However, Blackwell’s dedication to equal rights as well as his persistence apparently changed Stone’s mind, who was already a noted women’s suffrage and anti-slavery lecturer by the time of their marriage. They would move into a house near the location of this historical marker.

Though perhaps overshadowed by their contemporaries in the national memory, the couple remained active in the years after their wedding: both helped found the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1869, and both spoke at the 1855 Woman’s Rights Convention held in Cincinnati Ohio. The couple also published The Woman’s Journal beginning in 1870. Their daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, continued in her parents’ footsteps, also becoming an advocate for women’s rights.