[p. 91] seriously in consequence. Under the solemn influence of this bereavement she was led into a deeper religious feeling, which finally expressed itself in Friends' Meeting, and led to her becoming a preacher in the Society. In the year 1818, when she was twenty-five years old, she spoke for the first time in public. This was in the form of a prayer, which, sixty-one years after, she wrote out without hesitation from memory, giving the very words she had spoken.
As the years went on, speaking, at first difficult, became easy, and her ministry was eagerly sought, sometimes carrying her far afield, once in a private travelling carriage, with a Friend, on a religious visit into Virginia, and as far, several times, as Ohio and Indiana. She became a member of the ‘Fragment Society’ but resigned, because she found she could help as well without such association, and ‘because most of the conversations at the meetings are neither interesting nor instructive, much of it being what is called gossip.’ She and her husband both took part in the momentous ‘Separation’ among Friends, some following the teachings of Elias Hicks, others remaining Orthodox. This took place in or near 1827. During this time, from about 1820-1830, James Mott was engaged in the domestic commission business, including the sale of cotton, then considered a legitimate article of merchandise, even by anti-slavery people. It was a popular and very profitable business. But the powerful preaching of Elias Hicks against any voluntary participation with slavery was arousing Friends to an understanding of the subject, and led many to unite with him in abstinence from the products of slave labor. James and Lucretia Mott resolved, so far as their household was concerned, to ‘make things honest’ in this respect. This involved many daily discomforts and annoyances and not a few sacrifices of personal pride, but they consistently followed the path of their convictions until the Proclamation of Freedom in 1863 made it no longer necessary. As far as possible they bought their groceries
