Hunt, Jane Clothier, 1812-1889

<p>Jane Clothier Hunt or Jane Clothier Master (26 June 1812 – 28 November 1889) was an American Quaker who hosted the Seneca Falls meeting of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.</p>

<p>Hunt was born in Philadelphia in 1812 to William and Mary Master. She moved to Waterloo in New York in 1845 when she married fellow Quaker Richard Pell Hunt, a prominent local businessman and landowner.</p>

<p>As progressive Quakers, Hunt and her husband were believers in social reform and humanitarian causes. They were both active supporters of abolitionism and the women's rights movement. Hunt's home in Waterloo is thought to have functioned as a station of the Underground Railroad, with a carriage house that was converted to a way station for fugitive slaves.</p>

<p>Women's membership and role was an important topic of discussion in Hunt's Quaker community, and she worked actively to improve women's position in the church. Hunt was one of the members of a local Quaker monthly meeting which proposed removing the official inequality between men's and women's meetings described in the book of discipline; this proposal was adopted at a regional level at the Genesee Yearly Meeting in 1838.</p>

<p>Hunt had four children with her husband (one died at childbirth), and was step-mother to Richard's three children from a previous marriage. Richard Hunt died on November 7, 1856. After his death, Hunt continued to live in the family home.</p>

<p>In 1848, Jane Hunt was part of a group of women who invited the reformer Lucretia Mott to visit New York, with Hunt offering to host the gathering at her home. Mott stayed with her pregnant sister, Martha Wright, who lived in the area. Hunt invited a number of Quaker women including Mary Ann M'Clintock as well as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was not a Quaker. The day at Hunt's home was an important re-meeting between Mott and Stanton, who had met eight years before at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. They had both been invited to the convention but they had to suffer the indignity of sitting separately and not being allowed to speak because they were women.</p>

<p>As a result of the meeting at Hunt's home on July 9, it was agreed to arrange an open meeting at Seneca Falls later in the month. Hunt and the other women present drafted a call for attendees that was published in the Seneca County Courier on July 14.</p>

<p>The assembly that would come to be known as the Seneca Falls Convention is considered to be the first organized meeting about women's rights. Hunt and her husband were both signatories to the Declaration of Sentiments and attended the Convention.</p>

<p>Hunt died in Chicago in 1889; her body was buried in Waterloo beside her husband.</p>

<p>Jane Clothier Master Hunt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 26, 1812, the daughter of William and Mary Master. Her marriage to Richard Pell Hunt in November 1845 brought her to Waterloo as part of the extended family of Hunts, M'Clintocks, Mounts, Plants, and Pryors, all of them related to Richard P. Hunt as sisters, nieces, in-laws, or siblings of in-laws. At least one person from each of these nuclear families signed the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, including Jane and Richard Hunt, four M'Clintocks, Lydia Mount and her daughter Mary E. Vail, Hannah Plant, and George and Margaret Pryor. While these family ties seem complicated, all of them reflect the importance of sibling relationships and the responsibilities that brothers and sisters also felt for nieces and nephews. All of these families were of Quaker background. All of them had migrated to Waterloo either from Philadelphia or from eastern New YorkState.</p>

<p>Jane's marriage at age thirty-three made her the step-mother of three older children, all born to Richard's third wife, Sarah M'Clintock Hunt--Richard, born July 4, 1838; Mary M., born in 1839; and Sarah M., born in 1841. On October 6, 1846, two years after her marriage, Jane bore her own first child, a son named William Master Hunt. Less than a month before the Seneca Falls convention, on June 23, 1848, she gave birth to a daughter, Jane M., whom they called Jenny. Jane’s third child, George Truman Hunt was born on April 18, 1852. The Hunts named him after Jane’s brother in law, George Truman. Truman was married to Jane’s sister Catharine and was a Quaker minister and physician living in Philadelphia. He attended Richard P Hunt during his final illness in 1856. The Hunts, M’Clintocks and Trumans frequently visited each other in Waterloo and Philadelphia. A fourth child, Anna, died at birth in March of 1854.</p>

<p>In 1850, the Hunt household, like those of many other signers, included not only Jane and Richard Hunt and their children but also three non-related members. George Hunter was an Irish-born laborer, aged thirty. Ann McClelland, also Irish-born, was twenty-five. Both probably worked in the Hunt household. Elizabeth Kinnard, only thirteen years old, also lived with the Hunts.</p>

<p>Jane's marriage to Richard P. Hunt made her the wife of one of the richest men in Seneca County, and their home at 6 Main Street on the Seneca Turnpike (now Routes 5 and 20), just east of the village of Waterloo, reflected their prosperity. The house was an eleven-room brick Federal-style mansion with a central hallway, old-fashioned for the 1840s but commodious. They lived in considerable comfort, with carpeted floors, upholstered sofas, rocking chairs in the sitting room and the parlor, astral lamps, window shades (probably painted) in the parlor, curtained windows in the sitting room and bedrooms, and a full complement of dinner ware, silver teaspoons, glasses, and candle sticks. They kept a horse, four carriages, and a sleigh in the barn.</p>

<p>When several Quaker women decided to invite Lucretia Mott, a well-known minister and reformer from Philadelphia, to visit Waterloo in July 1848, Jane Hunt offered her house for the meeting. On Sunday, July 9, 1848, Mott arrived at the Hunt house with her sister, Martha Wright, from Auburn, New York. Mary Ann M'Clintock of Waterloo was also there. So was one other woman, the only non-Quaker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton had first met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, when Stanton was on her honeymoon. When the London meeting refused to admit women delegates from the U.S., Stanton remembered, the women had agreed to hold a meeting when they returned home solely to discuss the rights of women. Now, seeing Mott again after many years apart inspired Stanton once more. She "poured out her long-standing discontent."</p>

<p>The women decided to hold a meeting "for protest and discussion." Richard P. Hunt may have encouraged this decision, for family legend suggests that, practical Quaker that he was, he reminded them that "faith without works is dead." The women decided to meet quickly, before Mott returned home to Philadelphia. Around the Hunts' tea table, they drafted a brief notice announcing, "A Convention to discuss the social, civic 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. . . ." The notice was delivered to the offices of the Seneca County Courier in Seneca Falls, where it first appeared on Tuesday, July 11. Without that gathering of Quaker women who were experienced in the strategy and tactics of the abolition movement, energized by Stanton around Jane Hunt's tea table, there would have been no Seneca Falls convention.</p>

<p>Richard P. Hunt died November 7, 1856, leaving Jane a widow with six children eighteen years old and younger. Jane C. Hunt continued the family's tradition of philanthropy when she gave to St. Paul's Episcopal Church the land for St. John's Chapel on the east side of Chapel Street in Waterloo. She lived in the family home until her own death while on a visit to her daughter in Chicago on November 28, 1889, aged 77. She was buried next to her husband in Maple Grove Cemetery in Waterloo.</p>

<p>Jane and Richard Hunt of Waterloo, New York were philanthropists who supported human rights causes. They hosted the tea party that led to the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in July 1848.</p>

<p>Jane Clothier Master was born June 26, 1812 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Quakers William and Mary Master. At age thirty-three Jane Master married Richard Hunt in November 1845 and moved to Waterloo, New York, where she became a member of Richard’s extended family of Hunts, McClintocks, Mounts, Plants and Pryors. All of these families were Quakers who had migrated to Waterloo from Philadelphia or New York State.</p>

<p>After Quaker service on Sunday July 9, 1848, several women decided to invite Lucretia Mott, a well-known Quaker minister and social reformer from Philadelphia, to visit Waterloo. Mott was famous for her oratorical ability, which was rare during an era which women were often not allowed to speak in public. Jane Hunt, who had given birth two weeks earlier and was tending the baby at home, offered her house for the meeting.</p>

<p>Mott arrived at the Hunt house with her sister, Martha Wright from Auburn, New York. Mary Ann McClintock of Waterloo was also there. The only non-Quaker was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from nearby Seneca Falls. As the women drank their tea, Stanton, the only non-Quaker present, vented a lifetime’s worth of pent-up frustration, about women’s subservient place in society.</p>

<p>Stanton had first met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, when Stanton was on her honeymoon. When the London meeting refused to admit women delegates from the United States, the two women had agreed to hold a meeting to discuss the rights of women when they returned home, but real life intervened, and they never did. Seeing Mott again after eight years apart inspired Stanton once more, and she “poured out her long-standing discontent.”</p>

<p>They discussed the misfortunes imposed upon females – they could not vote or own property, and there were few social or intellectual opportunities. These women decided they wanted change. Without that gathering of Quaker women who were experienced in the strategy and tactics of the abolition movement, energized by Stanton, there would have been no Seneca Falls convention.</p>