Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New YorkOn a summer day in 1846 two years before the Seneca Falls convention that launched the movement for woman's rights in the United States six women in rural upstate New York sat down to write a petition to their state's constitutional convention, demanding "equal, and civil and political rights with men." Refusing to invoke the traditional language of deference, motherhood, or Christianity as they made their claim, the women even declined to defend