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Sherry H. Penney, The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman's Rights Convention, Journal of American History, Volume 92, Issue 3, December 2005, Pages 989–990, https://doi.org/10.2307/3660031
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This is an important book, in which the author assembles a comprehensive collection of well-documented information to explain why Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 was a propitious place for launching the movement for women's rights. Judith Wellman, former historian of the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls and a longtime expert on reform in upstate New York, has written the definitive work on the convention and the various factors that led to it. She argues persuasively that several issues were in play: the changing economic patterns in western New York, the particular influence of the Quaker religion and values, the political climate (which included the passage of the Married Women's Property Act), abolitionist activities, and women's lives, experiences, and networks.
Wellman's book is a thoroughly researched and detailed account of the people, places, and events that led up to the women's rights convention, including comprehensive descriptions of the towns of Seneca Falls and Waterloo. Central to the story is Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Wellman carefully delineates the early influences on Stanton and the role she played in Seneca Falls and in the movement that followed. She provides an overview of the convention itself and the two planning meetings that preceded it, at which the historic Declaration of Sentiments and various resolutions were drafted. The roles played by Stanton's colleagues Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Abby Kelley, and the M'Clintocks and numerous other players in abolition and women's rights are discussed as they relate to Seneca Falls and other facets of the movement.
