March is Women’s History Month, and former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will posthumously receive the Great Americans medal next week from the National Museum of American History. Is there a better time to visit New York State’s Women’s Rights National Historical Park?
The park is primarily a two-story museum and visitors center in the small town of Seneca Falls in the beautiful Finger Lakes region, about a one-hour drive either east of Rochester or west of Syracuse. About 6,000 residents live in Seneca Falls, situated near the northwest tip of Cayuga Lake, the region’s largest lake.
The museum tells the story of the first Women’s Rights Convention which was held in Seneca Falls on July 19-20, 1848.
About 300 people attended the first Women's Rights Convention at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca ... [+]
“It is a story of struggles for civil rights, human rights and equality — global struggles that continue today,” the National Park Service says on its website. “The efforts of women’s rights leaders, abolitionists and other 19th-Century reformers remind us that all people must be accepted as equals.”
Besides the museum, rangers give historic talks outdoors daily, and the adjacent Wesleyan Chapel and historic homes are nearby. The chapel was the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention, which was attended by about 300 people. Many historians, the National Park Service says, believe the convention was the formal beginning of the women’s rights movement in the United States.
The Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, the home of the convention’s main organizer and the primary author of the Declaration of Sentiments, is at 32 Washington St. The declaration, viewed as the founding document of the women's rights movement, is modeled after the Declaration of Independence and proclaims that "all men and women are created equal." Stanton called her home the “Center of the Rebellion” during her family’s 15 years in Seneca Falls.
The Declaration of Sentiments was drafted at the M'Clintock House, about four miles west of Seneca Falls in Waterloo. The two-story, red-brick house at 14 Williams St. was built in 1836 and occupied by the M'Clintock family. They operated a drugstore, ran a school, led a monthly Quaker meeting and “were involved in almost every reform activity in Western New York,” the park service says.
Only the exteriors of the Stanton and M’Clintock houses can be visited because of the pandemic. The Women’s Rights National Historical Park is open Thursday-Sunday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
