PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Museum of the American Revolution today announces new details of its loan acquisitions for The Declaration’s Journey – a special exhibition running from Oct. 18, 2025 through Jan. 3, 2027 commemorating the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence – related to female activists and suffragists in the 18th and 19th centuries who both touted the Declaration’s progressive ideals and pushed the United States to apply the its promise of equality to women.

On the night of July 4, 1776, the first copies of the Declaration of Independence were published at John Dunlap’s printing office, near Second and Market Streets in Philadelphia. The news of independence spread quickly and widely both in the United States and abroad. Though women were not mentioned in the declaration issued by the Continental Congress, they contributed to its proliferation and success. Beginning with Dunlap, printers created broadsides of the Declaration, and they published the text in their newspapers. In July 1776, Mary Katharine Goddard of Baltimore was the only woman running a newspaper under her own name in the newly declared United States. She first published the Declaration in her newspaper, the Maryland Journal, and later also printed broadside copies of the Declaration, the first version to bear the names of the men who signed the revolutionary document. The Declaration’s Journey will feature a rare surviving broadside of the Declaration of Independence printed by Goddard in January 1777, on loan from Brian and Barbara Hendelson.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, activists fought for women’s rights and cited the words of the Declaration of Independence to advocate for education, temperance, abolition, and especially suffrage. In Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, 100 men and women signed a Declaration of Sentiments that looked very similar to the Declaration of Independence, with a key difference – it affirmed that “all men and women are created equal.” At the time, women in the United States had few legal, social, and political rights compared to men. Women were not allowed to vote. Only a few state laws allowed them to own property if they got married. They had limited rights in the court system and could not serve in government positions.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a skilled writer and orator for the suffrage movement, wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, borrowing its title from the American Anti-Slavery Society while retaining the structure and much of the language from the United States’ Declaration. Of the 68 women who signed the Declaration of Sentiments, only one, Rhoda Palmer, lived long enough to legally vote after nationwide women’s suffrage was achieved in 1918.

The Declaration’s Journey will feature Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s desk used in her house in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she lived from 1868-1887. Alongside coauthors Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper, and Susan B. Anthony, Stanton likely used this desk during the writing process for their History of Woman Suffrage book which they began working on following the suffragists’ appearance at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. At that appearance, a small group of suffragists including Stanton famously interrupted the proceedings of the Fourth of July celebration at Independence Hall to present their Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States to Vice President Thomas Ferry. History of Woman Suffrage was later published in 1881.

Coline Jenkins, the great-great-granddaughter of Stanton, will lend the desk to the Museum for the full run of The Declaration’s Journey. Just as Stanton and her fellow activists took advantage of the attention surrounding the Centennial celebration to travel to Philadelphia and champion their cause, Jenkins said she is thrilled to have her ancestor represented through the Museum’s special exhibition celebrating the Semiquincentennial.

“The Declaration’s Journey will be the focus of the nation in 2026,” Jenkins said. “It means a lot to me and to my family to contribute this artifact at such a key time to such a key institution. It was never my family’s interest to have it stored away from the American people. Now, by its inclusion in this special exhibition, the desk can be a tool for Americans to understand where they came from and how to move forward.”

Displayed near Stanton’s desk in The Declaration’s Journey will be the earliest known printing of the Declaration of Sentiments, on loan from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The exhibition will also include a ballot box made from blueberry crates that was used in 1868 in a protest organized by Vineland, New Jersey, resident Portia Gage. One hundred and seventy-two local white and Black women cast illegal votes in the ballot box, which will be on loan from the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society.

“American women have helped to shape the legacy of the Declaration of Independence over the past 250 years,” said Matthew Skic, Senior Curator at the Museum of the American Revolution. “Stories of revolutionary women such as Mary Katherine Goddard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Portia Gage remind us of the long-standing and continuing struggle to strengthen the American nation’s commitment to equality stated back in 1776.”