Tiny Montgomery County Community Was Huge in U.S. Struggle for Equality

La Mott, an unincorporated residential community in Cheltenham Township, is probably not a location known to most Montgomery County residents.

But it should be.

Its legacy was covered by Robert Bell in a USA Today Network video.

The location’s name honors Lucretia Mott, an American Quaker, women’s activist, abolitionist, and social reformer. Her life spanned U.S. history from the late 18th Century to the early 19th.

Born Lucretia Coffin, she hailed from Massachusetts but came to the Philadelphia area as the result of a family move.

Her Quaker faith informed her anti-slavery sentiment, an outlook shared by husband James Mott.

Together, they worked on initiatives that included the Philadelphia Free Produce Society, which sold products not reliant on slave labor, and the first Women’s Rights Convention (1848) in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

The humanitarian work of the Motts eventually led to the community bearing the couple’s name. The site once hosted an Underground Railroad stop and Camp William Penn, a training ground for African American Civil War troops.

An in-depth look of the significance of La Mott, its two most notable residents, and the community as it exists today is in the USA Today Network presentation, Camptown: The Village of La Mott, hosted by military historian Greg Urwin.

It can be found at the top of this post or on the website of Rochester, New York’s daily paper, which shares the Gannett brand with USA Today, the Democrat & Chronicle.

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A supplementary video look at Lucretia Mott, from the Center for Civic Education.