M'Clintock, Mary Ann, 1800-1884

Mary Ann M'Clintock or Mary Ann McClintock (February 20, 1800 - May 21, 1884) is best known for her role in the formation of the women's suffrage movement, as well as abolitionism.

Born Mary Ann Wilson in Burlington, New Jersey of Quaker parents, she attended Westtown School in 1814 for one year. In 1820, she married fellow Quaker Thomas M’Clintock, a druggist and Biblical scholar, and with him moved to 107 South 9th Street where he kept his drugstore. Here their children, Elizabeth, Mary Ann, Sarah and Julia were born.

Both the M’Clintocks were active abolitionists. In 1833, Mary Ann was instrumental in the creation of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. She helped with the Society’s first Anti-Slavery Fair in 1836. In 1837, the M’Clintocks and their children moved to Waterloo, New York, where they helped to form the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and entertained many traveling radical abolitionists. Thomas also served as clerk of Genesee Yearly Meeting and Mary Ann, as assistant clerk of the women’s yearly meeting.

In 1848, when this yearly meeting split to form the more radical Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends, the M’Clintocks became active in this new group. M'Clintock was one of five women who planned the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, at the Waterloo home of her sister-in-law, Jane Hunt. The next day the women met at her house and framed the Declaration of Statements, the first such document calling for equal rights for women in the world. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Statements was considered the fuel that started the fire that was the suffragist movement which lasted until 1920.

The M'Clintocks returned to Philadelphia circa 1876. Mary Ann remained active in the women's suffrage movement until her death in 1884.