16 Facts About Thomas M'Clintock

Thomas M'Clintock was an American pharmacist and a leading Quaker organizer for many reforms, including abolishing slavery, achieving women's rights, and modernizing Quakerism.

Thomas M'Clintock became a druggist or pharmacist, which at the time would have been achieved through an apprenticeship.

At age twenty-two, Thomas M'Clintock began working as a druggist, opening his own store in Philadelphia, and six years later, in 1820, he married Mary Ann Wilson in Burlington, New Jersey.

In 1827, Thomas M'Clintock co-founded the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania along with James Mott, Richard Allen, and others and became its first secretary.

That same year Thomas M'Clintock was an instrumental force in the Hicksite Schism.

Thomas M'Clintock's arguments caused so much tension that even ten years later, in 1836, he and his family chose to move to Waterloo, New York.

In 1843, Thomas M'Clintock was elected to the board of managers of the American Anti-Slavery Society and later served as a vice president for a number of years.

Thomas M'Clintock wrote the new organization's Basis for Association, which specified that the organization would have no ministers, that no member would be subordinate to another, and that men and women would meet together with equal powers, not separately.

Thomas M'Clintock's wife, Mary Ann, was a major force in organizing the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention.

Thomas M'Clintock attended the famous tea party in the Hunt house where the idea for a convention was first discussed.

Thomas M'Clintock did chair one of the sessions of the subsequent convention and gave a speech in support of the declaration.

The entire Thomas M'Clintock family was involved in this convention, and they helped to organize a follow-up convention, the Rochester Women's Rights Convention of 1848, two weeks later in Rochester, New York.

Thomas M'Clintock returned to his trade as a pharmacist until about 1866.

Thomas M'Clintock died on March 19,1876 at age eighty-three.

Thomas M'Clintock's wife died eight years later on May 21,1884.

Thomas M'Clintock is remembered for his contributions to the anti-slavery movement and his impact on the first women's rights movements.