ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the lives of American woman Betsy Mix Cowles. The Ohio meeting was the third women's rights convention in the nation. The abolitionist movement was especially important in sparking the women's rights movement. Most women's rights supporters were also abolitionists. Cowles's Garrisonian friends Mary Whiting and Lizzie Jones, along with many more antislavery activists, would participate at the Salem convention. Antislavery also catalyzed women's rights by awakening women to the boundaries of the woman's sphere. In the wake of the Salem convention, Cowles returned to her teaching career, but she continued supporting women's rights throughout the 1850s. She served on the Executive Committee of the Ohio Woman's Rights Association in 1852 and attended many women's rights gatherings. In 1855, the McNeely institution, which included normal, academic, and model schools, was controlled by the Ohio State Teachers' Association. Cowles was appointed principal of the model school for young children and a teacher in the normal school for older youth.
