Hannah Mather Crocker

Hannah Crocker (June 27, 1752, in Boston – July 11, 1829, in Boston) was an American essayist and one of the first advocates of women's rights in America.[1] She was born into the illustrious Mather family of Boston, and heir to its long history of Puritan activism. Her most important contribution was the 1818 book Observations on the Real Rights of Women in which she argued that education was crucial to the advancement of women. This included a courageous defense of Mary Wollstonecraft, who, in Boston society, was viewed as a libertine. Crocker's work was the first book by an American author on the rights of women.[1]

Life Overview

Hannah Mather born on June 27, 1752 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Samuel Mather and Hannah Hutchinson. She married Joseph Crocker in 1779. With Crocker she had 10 children between 1780 and 1795. She died on July 11, 1829.

Ancestry

Hannah Mather Crocker's great-great-grandfather was Richard Mather who started the Mather Dynasty. Richard Mather’s most famed son was Increase Mather. Increase had an important role in stirring up the controversial event that was the Salem Witch Trials. Increase’s son Cotton Mather also participated in the Salem Witch Trials, but he was better known for what may be the founding idea behind the theory for vaccine. Cotton’s son Samuel also went into the church life and was the father of Hannah.

Life's Works

Before her marriage, Hannah Mather Crocker set up a school for women to show that women had the same intellectual capabilities as men, if they have the same educational opportunities. After raising her children, she took up a career in writing. Some of her most famed works include: A Series of Letters on Free Masonry, The School of Reform; or, Seaman's Safe Pilot to the Cape of Good Hopeand Observations on the Real Rights of Women, with Their Appropriate Duties, Agreeable to Scripture, Reason and Common Sense. In Observations on the Real Rights of Women, Crocker argued that men and women were in all ways equal.[2][3]

Possible Masonic Initiation

Karen Kidd, a member of the Order of American Co-Masonry, has written about Hannah Mather Crocker possibly being initiated into one of the oldest masculine lodges in America, the famous St. Andrews Lodge of Boston.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Taylor, Marion Ann (2006). Heather E. Weir,, ed. Let her speak for herself : nineteenth-century women writing on the women in Genesis. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. ISBN 1932792538.
  2. ↑ L.W. Koengeter, “Crocker, Hannah Mather,” in American Women Writers, ed. Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Detroit: St. James Press, 2000), 241.
  3. ↑ BenjaminFranklin V., “Crocker, Hannah Mather,” in American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, vol. 5 (New York: Oxford University Press,1999), 747-48.

Further reading