Biography

Mentioned in 18491205FAW_LMW as Elisa Wright. 

Feminist. Born Eliza Wright into a family of political activists and social reformers, Mrs. Osborne followed in the footsteps of her mother, Martha Coffin Wright, who together with  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and her aunt, Lucretia Mott, had called the first Women's Suffrage Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. After her marriage to farm machinery manufacturer David M. Osborne, with whom she had four children, she devoted her prodigious energies to both her household and the fight to enfranchise women, hosting regular meetings at her Auburn, New York, home with Anthony, Stanton, and other leaders in the movement. A witty and persuasive writer, she was also active in promoting education and the arts. Among those she inspired to public service were her son, prison reformer Thomas Mott Osborne, and her grandson Lithgow Osborne, a diplomat and environmentalist. She held leadership positions in women's suffrage organizations until her death at age 81, nine years before the passage of 19th Amendment that granted American women the right to vote.

In 1871, Eliza and her husband travelled with WSJ and JWS for two months, going to San Francisco with the Knapps.