Introducing Women's Rights National Historical Park

On July 19, 1848, hundreds of people crowded into the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York to participate in a public discussion about the rights of women that challenged all social conventions of the time.  The following two-day convention included the presentation and signing of the Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled after the Declaration of Independence, outlining the many ways in which women were denied equal status to men. At a time when it was 
unacceptable for women to have a public life outside the home, let alone speak at a public forum, the events that took place at the Wesleyan Chapel marked a major milestone in the ongoing fight for women’s equality.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was an effective proponent of women's rights for over half a century. She was influential in organizing a women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1948 which is widely viewed as the beginning of the modern feminist movement. Having written the Declaration of Sentiments in for the convention, she continued to be one of the women’s rights movement’s most dynamic orators and philosophers. Recognizing the need for women's suffrage from the beginning, she was also involved in other reform movements of the period, such as abolitionism, temperance and dress reform.

In October 2019 CyArk traveled to Seneca Falls New York to the Women's Rights National Historic Park to document three buildings central to the events of the first women’s rights convention. In collaboration with the National Park Service, CyArk used terrestrial photogrammetry and LiDAR to document the Wesleyan Chapel, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, and the Hunt House, helping preserve these important places and the stories that they tell.