Hannah Mather Crocker

Hannah Mather Crocker (June 27, 1752 – July 11, 1829) was an American essayist, poet, and historian. She was an early advocates of women's rights in America, and a pioneer for women's participation in Freemasonry. Her memoir and history of Massachusetts, The Reminisces and Traditions of Boston, is the first known history of the American Revolution to be published in America, and her Observations on the Real Rights of Women (1818) was the first book-length philosophical treatise on women's rights to be published by an American.

Early life and family Crocker's father, Samuel Mather, was a prominent Puritan minister. Hannah Mather Crocker born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on June 27, 1752. She was the daughter of Samuel Mather, a Congregationalist minister, and Hannah Hutchinson. She was a descendant of the Mather dynasty founded in New England by Richard Mather (1596–1669), through his son Increase Mather (1639–1723) and his grandson Cotton Mather (1663-1728), all prominent Puritan ministers involved in the important religious and political issues of their era, including the Salem Witch Trials, the 1689 Revolt against Governor Edmund Andros, and the controversy over vaccination against smallpox. Her mother's brother was Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the years preceding the American Revolution. She was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), a female preacher famous for being exiled from Massachusetts for heresy.

Crocker was raised in the Puritan tradition, and held strong Protestant beliefs throughout her life, later becoming an advocate for Universalist theology. Like many Puritans, Crocker's father Samuel Mather was both highly educated, and believed in the importance of women's education. As a result, Crocker was extensively educated from a young age in languages, history, theology, and literature, and grew up with access to the Mather family's library, one of the largest private libraries in New England. Though she did not inherit much by way of cash, by selling off or donating portions of this library and collection, she was able to barter for access to some of the leading academic and antiquarian institutions of Massachusetts at the time, including the American Antiquarian Society and Massachusetts Historical Society. Through this lodge, Crocker helped to pioneer the 19th century trend of "women's reading circles" by sharing her resources and literacy with other women who may otherwise have had difficulty accessing books or an education. Crocker also satirized male lodges in a number of poems and songs for their hypocrisy in promoting equality but not allowing female members.

Writings Hannah Mather Crocker authored and published a number of books and tracts under her own name, and ghost-wrote and published numerous essays, sermons, and poems under various pseudonyms including ‘‘Prudencia A Matron," "An Original Antiquarian," and "Increase Mather Jr. of the Inner Temple."

Crocker also grounded her advocacy for women's rights in a religious discourse of republican motherhood, arguing that "It must be women's prerogative to shine in the domestic circle and her appropriate duty to teach and regulate the opening mind of her little flock.... The surest foundation to secure the female's right, must be in family government." She also extended religious arguments for women's equality, arguing that sex is a trait of the body but not the soul, and that since women are responsible for the spiritual health of the community, they are also entitled to spiritual education. Drawing on a tradition established by 18th century feminist writers including Wollstonecraft,

The second half of the Reminisces and Traditions of Boston is a collection of newspaper clippings, poems, and letters "extracted from public papers for juvinal instruction, amusement, and improvement for the rising generation."

Other works Crocker's other works include: A Series of Letters on Free Masonry Antiquarian Researches, Pleasant and Easy, She also wrote a satirical play, The Midnight Beau.

In the 1810s, Crocker recorded four sermons (two of which she preached publicly) opposing the War of 1812. She also authored an abolitionist sermon in 1813, and decried slavery in a number of her other works.