The Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York consists of four major historical properties including the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which was the site of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, and the homes of other early women’s rights activists (the M’Clintock House and the Richard Hunt House) are also on display. The park includes a visitor center and an education and cultural center housing the Suffrage Press Printshop.
The Visitor Center lobby houses a large, life-size bronze sculpture, The First Wave, which consists of twenty figures representing women and men who attended the first Women’s Rights Convention. Nine of the sculpture’s figures represent actual participants and organizers of the convention: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Wright, Jane Hunt, Frederick Douglass, James Mott, Thomas M’Clintock, and Richard Hunt. The other eleven figures represent the “anonymous” women and men who participated in the 2-day convention, which took place on July 19 and 20, 1848, and which drew over 300 people. Many of the participants signed a “Declaration of Sentiments,” the convention’s defining document, which declared that “all men and women are created equal.”
