Quaker education and public speaking
Mott grew up in a Quaker family on Nantucket and studied at Nine Partners boarding school in New York. Reading and visiting speakers introduced antislavery arguments, while unequal pay for female and male teachers exposed inequalities within the religious community.
She and her husband James settled in Philadelphia. Quaker worship offered women opportunities to speak, and she carried that practice into wider public life. In 1843 she addressed an audience including members of Congress in Washington, challenging restrictions on women's public speech.
Abolitionist organizing and London
In 1833 Mott helped establish the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society with Mary Ann M'Clintock and other reformers. Speaking, fundraising and interracial gatherings sustained this work; she and James later opposed the Fugitive Slave Act.
As a delegate to the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, she was excluded from formal participation because she was a woman. There she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Sex-based restrictions within abolitionism helped connect their antislavery work with a campaign for women's rights.
Women's rights and education
Mott, Stanton, M'Clintock, Martha Wright and Jane Hunt helped organize the Seneca Falls convention in July 1848. She continued speaking at women's-rights meetings and published Discourse on Woman, examining restrictions on women's lives and opportunities.
In 1866 she became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association. She also helped establish Swarthmore College and supported coeducation. She died in 1880; surviving correspondence, diaries and speeches preserve the record of sustained religious and reform work.