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From: Patti Hobbs <>
Subject: [TGF] Fathers and Rulers petition
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:18:06 -0500


I've been reading _Arguing About Slavery_ by William Lee Miller and found a
reference to materials that seem to me might prove interesting. He is
telling about the abolitionist societies and how Theodore Weld wrote a
petition for women in any given area to sign and send to Congress. He says
that the editor of a book of the collected letters of Theodore Weld and the
Grimke sisters states that "tens of thousands" of these petitions (signed by
women up until 1840) are in the files of the House of Representatives
(boxes 85-126) in the Library of Congress.

The petition has spaces in which to insert a county, so all the women
signing any petition would be from a particular location. It seems like that
this might be a great resource for getting women's names for a time period
when women's names are hard to find. Has anything ever been done with these
petitions?

Patti

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