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26 W o r c e s t e r 3 0 0 : C i t y o f I n n o v a t o r s 1822-1921 A contrarian voice to the growing industrial strength not only of Worcester but of the nation, Abby Kelley Foster said of the current state of affairs in 1850 at the first National Women's Rights Convention: "Man is wronged, not in London, New York, or Boston alone. Look around you here in Worcester ... his whole soul engaged in dollars and cents, until the Multiplication Table becomes his creed, his Pater Noster, and his Decalogue." Raised a Quaker, she adopted increasingly staunch and even radical views on abolition in particular and reform in general. "Whether the subject is abolition or the crusade for women's rights, to read the public statements of Abby Kelley Foster is to be brought into a reflection on responsibility — the responsibility of those in power who have created social inequities as well as the responsibilities of the public to identify and address injustices when they are seen," says Rob Lawson, professor of history at Dean College in Franklin. By the mid-1830s, she had become an ardent follower of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. She moved to Lynn to pursue a teaching career and rose to become secretary of the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838, in partnership with Garrison, she helped form the New England Non- Resistance Society. e more conventional abolitionists rejected women as leaders of the cause and also sought political solutions to slavery, while the new society preached moral suasion and nonviolence as alternatives. Buoyed by the growing commitment of Abby Kelley Foster (1811-1887) Foster pushed to reform society A leader in the fight for equality Republicans to ending slavery, Garrison opted for a more practical stance. Foster was among the outspoken ultras who shared with her husband a sentiment that a party generally opposed to slavery but lacking a specific actionable plan for ending it, is actually more dangerous to the cause of freedom than even the extreme pro-slavery forces. e eruption of Civil War made ending slavery a central element in the northern crusade. Although health challenges led her to scale back her traveling and lectures in the later 1850s, she remained active in the American Anti-Slavery Society and worked for the ratification of the 14th and 15th amendments. In the 1870s, her family's farm itself became a vehicle for challenging societal norms and promoting change. Because as a woman she was denied the right to vote, she and her husband Stephen proclaimed their unwillingness to pay their property taxes, an act of civil disobedience led to the property being seized by the city on three separate occasions. Each time sympathetic friends ended up paying the taxes for them. But their point was made. e privately owned home still stands and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. – Alan R. Earls Image | Worcester Historical Museum Abby Kelley Fter's family farm became a vehicle for challenging societal norms and promoting change.