Mariana Wright Chapman

Mariana Wright Chapman (March 14, 1843 – November 9, 1907) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist. Her most active work was in the direction of prison reform and equal rights for women. Chapman was well-known through her work in the Hicksite Society of Friends, of which she was one of the organizers, and because of her advocacy of woman's suffrage. Chapman was president of the Woman Suffrage Association of Brooklyn, which office she resigned to become president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. on Hester Street, Lower East Side. After the removal of the family to Springboro, Ohio, in 1857, she attended Antioch College for two years.

While all movements for the betterment of humanity received her support, her most active work was in the direction of prison reform and equal rights for women.

As their three sons and two daughters got older, Mariana became active in the struggle for woman suffrage. Her interest in woman suffrage began in 1884, during the convention of the Woman Suffrage Association in Brooklyn, of which Lucy Stone was president. These meetings made a profound impression upon her and shortly after, she decided to assist in this work. She joined the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association and later became its president. She then served as president of the New York State Woman's Suffrage Association from 1897 to 1902, when she resigned because of ill health.

When Governor Roosevelt recommended to the New York State Legislature that it should extend some measure of representation to women, Chapman was one of the women who were summoned to Albany, New York to confer with him. She also spoke before the Legislature on the subject several times, as among public speakers, she was unusually effective. Interment was at Westbury, New York (Long Island). The Mariana Wright Chapman Family Papers are held at Swarthmore College.