Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an activist and abolitionist often credited with initiating the women’s rights and women’s suffrage movements in the U.S., was born in upstate New York in 1815. Unlike many women of her time, she was formally educated, at Johnstown Academy and Emma Willard School. With her husband Henry Brewster Stanton, whom she married in 1840, Stanton became involved in abolitionism. After the Civil War, Stanton turned her attention to women’s suffrage; her other interests included employment rights, birth control, and women’s parental rights. Though she died 18 years before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, she played a vital role in the women’s suffrage movement.