Last updated: March 17, 2021
Place
Site of 'The Una' Office
NPS Photo/Woods
Quick Facts
Location:
15 Franklin Street
Significance:
Site of 'The Una' Office
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
MANAGED BY:
Public Space with Private Buildings
In 1853, Paulina Davis and Caroline Healey Dall founded The Una, one of the earliest women’s rights periodicals in the United States. First published in Providence, The Una moved to Boston for its final year of publication (1855). In the first edition, Davis wrote, “In our editorial service we shall discuss with candor and earnestness, the Rights, Relations, Duties, Destiny and Sphere of Woman. Her Education—Literary, Scientific, and Artistic.—Her Avocation—Industrial, Commercial, and Professional. Her Interests—Pecuniary, Civil and Political.”1
Masthead of The Una (Credit: Boston Athenaeum.)
Due to its close proximity, The Una provided information on local leaders and women’s rights activities in Boston and Massachusetts. Harriot K. Hunt’s first petition appeared in The Una, as well as Lucy Stone’s and Henry Blackwell’s “Marriage Protest.”2 Some of the publication’s writers and editors commented on abolition, as many activists participated in both movements at the time. In 1854, The Una’s coverage of the 1854 Boston Woman’s Rights Convention, which occurred the same day federal marshals forcibly took freedom seeker Anthony Burns back into slavery, particularly demonstrated the aligning beliefs of the two movements.3
Footnotes:
- “The Introduction,” The Una 1, no. 1 (February 1853), Boston Athenaeum, https://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=343885; “The Una,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed May 06, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Una.
- Harriot K. Hunt, “Protest,” The Una 1, no. 2 (March 1853); “Marriage of Lucy Stone Under Protest,” The Una 3, no. 6 (June 1855).
- Please see The Una vol 2, no. 5 (May 1854), as well as the NPS Article “Boston's First Woman's Rights Convention” for more information.