From this modest house at 32 Washington Street, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a movement destined to change the world. From 1847-1862, Stanton's Seneca Falls home served as the headquarters of the women's suffrage movement.

Stanton tirelessly wrote, organized and lobbied to secure civil rights for women, all the while balancing her responsibilities as a wife, homemaker and mother of seven.

Stanton moved to her home on the outskirts of Seneca Falls with her family in 1847. After overseeing a major renovation of the property, Stanton attempted to adapt to rural life. Isolated from intellectual discourse, and struggling to care for her growing household, Stanton fell into depression. According to Stanton, her discontent with domestic life drove her to question the equity of the "women's sphere" in America.

In 1848, Stanton, along with the fellow reformers Lucretia Mott, Jane Hunt, Martha Wright and MaryAnn McClintock, organized the "Women's Rights Convention" in Seneca Falls. At the convention, 68 women and 32 men signed the "Declaration of Women's Rights," now largely regarded as the starting point of the feminist movement.

Domestic responsibilities often kept Stanton home, however, she wrote countless newspaper articles and letters to conventions held in other states. In 1851, Stanton met fellow reformer Susan B. Anthony at an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls. Lacking the domestic responsibilities of Stanton, Anthony was free to travel to promote the movement.

The two formed a deep friendship, and within the walls of the Stanton home, wrote resolutions, protests, appeals and constitutional arguments in favor of women's rights. Anthony often aided Stanton in her domestic duties while Stanton wrote speeches for Anthony to deliver. In 1898 Stanton wrote, "I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them...Our speeches may be considered the united product of two brains."

The struggle for women's suffrage lasted nearly seventy-two years, and neither Stanton nor Anthony lived to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. However, the movement which originated in Seneca Falls forever changed the lives of American women.

Text written by Kimberly Messer,

Graduate Student, University of West Florida