About the Project
— Gatekeeper WikiDan61, upon rejecting the creation of a Wikipedia page for a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments.
Just because they aren't notable doesn't mean they didn't live important lives...
The 100 Signers Project is an undertaking designed to create a readily accessible, open resource that consists of short biographies for the 68 women and 32 men who signed their name to the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. To the best of my knowledge, no anthology (comprehensive or otherwise) of these individuals exists. Judith Wellman's 2004 book The Road to Seneca Falls attempts to redress this absence, but valuable work still remains to be done.
For this project, I will utilize both contemporary scholarship and any archival materials that I can uncover. I think any new information about the signers will do much to create new insight into their lives and into this crucial chapter of American history. Who were the signers? Why did they attend the Seneca Falls Convention?
I hope this project might capture how the 100 signers of the Declaration, when viewed together, represent a hyperconnected and often overlapping network of proto-Suffragists, Abolitionists, Spiritualists, and Hicksite Quakers, hailing from the "burned-over district" of New York and beyond. A good number of the names present on the Declaration need no introduction, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Frederick Douglass. Yet many of the names on the roll have been lost to history. Who were these people? Did they live otherwise unremarkable lives? Perhaps they were merely bystanders—normal, everyday individuals who happened to be present for the signing of one of the most important documents of American history. Or not...
[Click on the signer's name below to access profile.]
October 2023 - Mary E. Vail
July 2023 - Lydia Mount with Lorie Dalola
March 2023 - Margaret Pryor with Grace Roper and Lorie Dalola
January 2023 - William G. Barker
December 2022 - Catharine F. Stebbins
May 2022 - Rebecca Race
April 2022 -Martha Underhill with Hunter Bozelle, Madison Hare, Seth Mandryk, Scott Merritt, and Will Unruh
December 2021 - Harriet Cady Eaton
October 2021 - Isaac Van Tassel
August 2021 - S.E. Woodworth
July 2021 - Charlotte Woodward
May 2021 - Susan Quinn
April 2021 - Jacob Mathews
March 2021 - Dorothy Mathews
December 2020 - Delia Mathews
November 2020 - David Spalding
August 2020 - Margaret Schooley
July 2020 - Justin Williams
June 2020 - Eunice Newton Foote
June 2020 - Mary Conklin
May 2020 - Elizabeth Conklin
March 2020 - Henry W. Seymour
February 2020 - Henry Seymour
December 2019 - Malvina Seymour
August 2019 - Cynthia Fuller
July 2019 - Phebe King
June 2019 - E.W. Capron
December 2018 - Betsy Tewksbury
September 2018 - Robert Smallbridge/Robert Smalldridge
July 2018 - Mary S. Mirror/Mary L. Minor
June 2018 - Sophronia Mack Taylor
December 2017 - Experience Porter Gibbs
June 2017 - Azaliah Schooley