Lucy Stone Marriage Contract Suffrage Civil Rights Poster

Do you know anyone who kept her maiden name? Well you've got Lucy Stone to thank as a pioneer of that in 1855. Lucy Stone was the first woman in Massachusetts to get a four year college degree and she paid for it herself! She became a notable orator and abolitionist--even continuing to her speech when hecklers in the crowd threw things at her. She agreed to marry Henry because he fully supported her remaining her own person and together they wrote the contact protesting unfair marriage laws. The Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who performed the marriage, not only read the statement at the ceremony, but also distributed it to other ministers as a model that he urged other couples to follow and Lucy was the first woman in America to keep her maiden name even after marriage!