Convention Days 2024

Join us July 19-21, 2024 as we comemmorate the 176th anniversary of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention!

Revolutionary Families

Women's Rights National Historical Park invites visitors for Convention Days 2024, to be held in Seneca Falls, July 19-21. Convention Days, long a signature event in Seneca Falls, commemorates the anniversary of the 1848 women’s rights convention, where 300 women and men joined together in asserting that “all men and women are created equal.” The convention was the first of its kind in the United States and gave rise to the American women’s rights movement. The theme of Convention Days 2024 is Revolutionary Families, which will focus on the shifting role of the family throughout American history. Convention Days will include family programming, as well as presentations by historians, park staff, and living history performers focusing on the topic of family.

In the nineteenth century, women's lives were legally and socially defined by their families. Unmarried women were under the influence of their fathers, while married women were considered the property of their husbands. Women's autonomy existed only when permitted by the men in their families. Mothers' lives were dictated by the needs of their children, and children's rights extended no farther than their mothers.’ Fathers were also limited by societal expectations that they support their families rather than being caretakers.

The organizers of the 1848 women's rights convention recognized that family was at the core of many women's rights issues and addressed these in the Declaration of Sentiments:

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

Of the five convention organizers, all were wives and mothers, daughters and sisters, sisters-in-law, friends, and neighbors. Their roles in their families were intrinsically connected with their roles in society at large. Their own revolutionary families formed the basis for their activism; from Elizabeth Cady Stanton eliminating the word "obey" from her wedding vows, to the Coffin sisters' (Martha Wright and Lucretia Mott) abolitionist Quaker upbringing.

Today, gender and family remain intrinsically connected. Convention Days 2024: Revolutionary Families will focus on the ways family influenced the 1848 women's rights convention and the early women's rights movement, as well as the ways in which the definitions of family have changed and continue to impact human rights to this day.

Featured Programs

Opening the Doors: July 19, 1848

Seneca Falls Heritage Express

Rooted in Revolution: Quaker Families, Equal Rights, and the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse

Evolving Ideas of Family: Matilda Joslyn Gage & Lessons for R/evolutionary Change Today

Sunday, July 21, 11am in the Visitor Center Guntzel Theater.
Join Dr. Danielle Nagle, executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center, for a talk on one of the lesser-known leaders of the early women's rights movement. Matilda Joslyn Gage was a leading organizer and researcher in the women's suffrage movement of the 19th century who was written out of history for her radical views promoting abolition, the separation of Church and State, and advocacy for Indigenous rights. This talk will draw from her seminal work, Woman, Church and State, in which Gage envisioned a world regenerated through the reemergence of the matriarchy in balance with patriarchal forces. Gage viewed the Church and its institutional control of marriage as a primary source of women's oppression. Today, her wisdom continues to offer lessons for contemporary revolutionary change in modern contexts, which will be considered in this talk.

Program Schedule

The schedule of Convention Days programs will be updated regularly as it develops. Visit this page for programming updates.

Other Events and Activities

Convention Days is a community event. Visit our Nearby Attractions page for links to other museums and organizations in Seneca Falls. These organizations host Convention Days activities beyond those hosted by the park.