The _Seneca County Courier_, a semi-weekly journal, of July 14, 1848,
contained the following startling announcement:

SENECA FALLS CONVENTION.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.--A Convention to discuss the social,
civil, and religious condition and rights of woman, will be held
in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on Wednesday and
Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July, current; commencing at 10
o'clock A.M. During the first day the meeting will be exclusively
for women, who are earnestly invited to attend. The public
generally are invited to be present on the second day, when
Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, and other ladies and gentlemen,
will address the convention.

This call, without signature, was issued by Lucretia Mott, Martha C.
Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mary Ann McClintock. At this time
Mrs. Mott was visiting her sister Mrs. Wright, at Auburn, and
attending the Yearly Meeting of Friends in Western New York. Mrs.
Stanton, having recently removed from Boston to Seneca Falls, finding
the most congenial associations in Quaker families, met Mrs. Mott
incidentally for the first time since her residence there. They at
once returned to the topic they had so often discussed, walking arm
in arm in the streets of London, and Boston, "the propriety of holding
a woman's convention." These four ladies, sitting round the tea-table
of Richard Hunt, a prominent Friend near Waterloo, decided to put
their long-talked-of resolution into action, and before the twilight
deepened into night, the call was written, and sent to the Seneca
County Courier. On Sunday morning they met in Mrs. McClintock's parlor
to write their declaration, resolutions, and to consider subjects for
speeches.[8] As the convention was to assemble in three days, the time
was short for such productions; but having no experience in the _modus
operandi_ of getting up conventions, nor in that kind of literature,
they were quite innocent of the herculean labors they proposed. On the
first attempt to frame a resolution; to crowd a complete thought,
clearly and concisely, into three lines; they felt as helpless and
hopeless as if they had been suddenly asked to construct a steam
engine. And the humiliating fact may as well now be recorded that
before taking the initiative step, those ladies resigned themselves to
a faithful perusal of various masculine productions. The reports of