The Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 1851. Back row, from left: Mary Grew, Edward M. Davis, Haworth Wetherald, Abby Kimber, Miller McKim, and Sara Pugh. Seated, from left: Cyrus Burleigh, Margaret Jones Burleigh, Benjamin Bacon, Robert Purvis, Lucretia Mott, and James Mott.
(Collection of Women's Rights National Historical Park)

James and Lucretia Mott were founding members of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, one of the oldest in the nation, founded in 1833. In the same year Lucretia Mott and Mary Ann M’Clintock helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Robert Purvis, son of a wealthy cotton broker, was a leading African American abolitionist. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society from 1845 to 1850. Harriet Forten Purvis, his wife, was a founding member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Lucretia Mott, Mary Grew, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber were all delegates from the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society to the 1840 London World Anti-Slavery Convention.

When the M’Clintock family moved to Waterloo, New York in 1836 they kept close ties with the abolitionist movement. Throughout the years the Motts and M’Clintocks corresponded. The family friendship is one reason the Motts spent the summer of 1848 in upstate New York. The Motts also visited Native American reservations, prisons, hospitals, friends and family.

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