Hannah Crocker was an American essayist and one of the first advocates of women's rights in America. She was born into the illustrious Mather family of Boston, and heir to its long history of Puritan activism. Her most important contribution was the 1818 book Observations on the Real Rights of Women in which she argued that education was crucial to the advancement of women. This included a courageous defense of Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

, who, in Boston society, was viewed as a libertine.

Life Overview

Hannah Mather born on June 27, 1752 in Roxbury

Roxbury

Roxbury may refer to:United States*Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts*Roxbury, Connecticut*Roxbury, Kansas*Roxbury, Maine*Roxbury, New Hampshire*Roxbury Township, New Jersey*Roxbury, New York...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. She was the daughter of Samuel Mather and Hannah Hutchinson. She married Joseph Crocker in 1779. With Crocker she had 10 children between 1780 and 1795. She died on July 11, 1829.

Ancestry

Hannah Mather Crocker's great-great-grandfather was Richard Mather who started the Mather Dynasty. Richard Mather’s most famed son was Increase Mather

Increase Mather

Increase Mather was a major figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay . He was a Puritan minister who was involved with the government of the colony, the administration of Harvard College, and most notoriously, the Salem witch trials...

. Increase had an important role in stirring up the controversial event that was the Salem Witch Trials

Salem witch trials

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693...

. Increase’s son Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather, FRS was a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author and pamphleteer; he is often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials...

also participated in the Salem Witch Trials, but he was better known for what may be the founding idea behind the theory for vaccine. Cotton’s son Samuel also went into the church life and was the father of Hannah.

Life's Works

Before her marriage, Hannah Mather Crocker set up a school for women to show that women had the same intellectual capabilities as men, if they have the same educational opportunities. After raising her children, she took up a career in writing. Some of her most famed works include: A Series of Letters on Free Masonry, The School of Reform; or, Seaman's Safe Pilot to the Cape of Good Hopeand Observations on the Real Rights of Women, with Their Appropriate Duties, Agreeable to Scripture, Reason and Common Sense