Mott, James, , New York 1788 1868 Male Abolitionist Reformer reformer and abolitionist, was born in North Hempstead, Long Island, N. Y. , the son of Adam and Anne (Mott) Mott, through both of whom he inherited the blood of a seventeenth-century English emigrant, Adam Mott, and of a long line of Quaker ancestors.
His father was a farmer and miller.
In the spring of 1810 he had gone to Philadelphia, where he became a partner of Lucretia's father in the manufacture and sale of cut nails.
Education
Both parents were worthy people, moderately strict in following the principles of their religion, but they appear to have influenced the intellectual and moral development of their son less than did his mother's father, also named James Mott, a man of unusual intelligence and culture, interested in the advancement of education and in the movements for temperance and abolition.
The boy received his education chiefly in the Friends' boarding school at Nine Partners, about fifteen miles from Poughkeepsie, N. Y. , where he was a student for ten years and assistant and teacher for two years.
Career
About 1822 he went into the commission business in Philadelphia, dealing especially in cotton.
In deciding that indirect participation in slavery was wrong he was influenced by the teachings of Elias Hicks, the leader of the liberal movement in the Society of Friends, with whose theological views he also sympathized.
He took an advanced attitude, rare for the period, toward the position of women and early spoke in favor of giving them additional recognition in the Society of Friends.
Fully appreciating his wife's superior abilities as a public speaker, he accompanied her on extensive preaching and lecturing tours, thus saving her from the criticism to which, as a woman, she would have been liable at that time.
When, under the lead of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a few other women, the first woman's rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, N. Y. , in 1848, he presided over some of the sessions.
His ability to express ideas in writing, his sympathy, and his judgment were potent factors in the development of his wife's reputation and usefulness.
[James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters, ed.
Religion
After the separation in the Society in 1827 the Motts aligned themselves with the Hicksite group of Friends.
Connections
There he met Lucretia Coffin and on Apr. 10, 1811, the two were married.
Both he and his wife were delegates to the world antislavery convention held in London in 1840, and on his return he published his experiences in a little book called Three Months in Great Britain (1841).
Daughter:
N.
Four years later, while visiting a daughter in Brooklyn, N. Y., he died from an attack of pneumonia.
