[p. 89] poetry, Susan Marriott taught her pupils to love it too, and gave them selected passages to learn by heart as a regular school exercise. It was to this influence that Lucretia owed her familiarity with Milton, Cowper and Young, and above all, the Bible. The scope of studies was not wide, but it was all that Quakerism then demanded, including the ‘use of the globes.’ Their first map was one presented to the school by Captain Coffin in 1807. Lucretia made such good progress that at the age of fifteen she was made assistant teacher, and a year after regular teacher, her services entitling a younger sister to her education. A teacher's salary was about $100 a year with board. During this last year in the school some of the teachers, desiring a wider culture than the somewhat meager plan of Friendly education, formed a French class. Among these were James Mott and Lucretia Coffin. Even at that early day the unequal condition of woman impressed her mind. She said of this later, ‘Learning that the charge for tuition of girls was the same as that for boys, and that when they became teachers women received only half as much as men for their services, the injustice of this distinction was so apparent that I early resolved to claim for myself all that an impartial Creator had bestowed.’
During this time Captain Coffin was induced to give up his business in Boston and take charge of a branch manufactory of cut nails in Philadelphia, and consequently removed thither with his family in 1809, where Lucretia joined them, and in 1810 James Mott followed them. The young people were already engaged to be married. He was a pleasant looking fellow, tall, over six feet, with red hair and blue eyes, shy, and rather grave in manner. She, short, five feet, sprightly, and more than ordinarily comely, fond of a joke, impulsive and vivacious.
Thomas Coffin's business was so prosperous that he could offer a position to James Mott, who in 181 became his son-in-law, he being twenty-three and Lucretia
