Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York

by Lori D. Ginzberg

On a summer day in 1846--two years before the Seneca Falls convention that launched the movement for woman's rights in the United States--six women in rural upstate New York sat down to write a petition to their state's constitutional convention, demanding "equal, and civil and political rights with men." Refusing to invoke the traditional language of deference, motherhood, or Christianity as they made their claim, the women even declined to defend their position, asserting that "a self evident truth is sufficiently plain without argument." Who were these women, Lori Ginzberg asks, and how might their story change the collective memory of the struggle for woman's rights?

Very few clues remain about the petitioners, but Ginzberg pieces together information from census records, deeds, wills, and newspapers to explore why, at a time when the notion of women as full citizens was declared unthinkable and considered too dangerous to discuss, six ordinary women embraced it as common sense. By weaving their radical local action into the broader narrative of antebellum intellectual life and political identity, Ginzberg brings new light to the story of woman's rights and of some women's sense of themselves as full members of the nation.

Genres: History, Feminism, Nonfiction, Gender

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 23, 2005

Reviews

[Jessica Zu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an assigned reading. My professor wrote this book:) I have to admit that she is a good historian. Her underlying principle for this book (at least one of them) is that intellectual ideas/breakthroughs are not created from vacuum or in isolation. Like what Buddha taught, everything is conditioned co-arising and co-disappearing. Everything is situated, embedded and entangled in a context, a social fabric, a particular space and time. Even space and time is not a simple, pure and solid background. It's really like a web, weaved together with many threads, if you grab one, everything around it will be dragged out together. Ideas do not come from vacuum, they come from living experiences, daily tasks and conversations and they are shaped by national events (through newspapers, words of mouth) and communal life.
When only one clean story is heard over and over again, one has to ask why it is so clean. Where the messiness of life has been hidden. More often than not, such cleanness means silenced voices, forbidden talks, force boundaries and ignored ideas.
Reading this book is more like reading a detective story. With intriguing suspense, the author takes us back in 1846 and leads us through the life of these ladies. It is not simply a story, through the story-telling, the presence of the historian is felt. The difficulty to unearth the lives of these ladies through dearth evidence is impressive. However, between the dots of evidences, we also have room for imagination and that's what makes this story more interesting. We could guess and imagine, but there is no conclusion. And that's life.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whole idea of this book, that is the first half that I read until life hit me hard and I was unable to finish it in time for my book review assignment, is that suffrage movements began significantly before Seneca Falls. Phenomenal writing is written in a way that most micro-histories are, that is opening sentence, example, closing sentence for each page or paragraph. Also, big applause on Ginzberg for her research skills and methods. I dare anyone to try and google any of the women in Jefferson County with the goal of finding the level of information she did. A reader can tell she put a lot of soul into this book, and I look forward to finishing it on my own time at the end of the semester.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-written and well-researched essay on the role of 6 upstate NY women in starting the conversation on women's suffrage 2 years before the Seneca Falls convention. Ginzberg explores what citizenry means, and touches upon themes of gender, political rights, and property in the new nation to advance a history of an American episode not heretofore known well to general readers.

The text is written in a detailed nuanced academic language, but it's worth going through multiple readings.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

An academic book (with fantastic footnotes) but it reads like one for a more general audience. Ginzburg argues that the first calls for the ballot did not happen in Seneca Falls (1848) but instead in 1846 in the form of a petition to the state of NY signed by 6 women.