Lucy Stone was the first known woman to keep her own name after she married. Her husband, Henry Blackwell, needs to be given credit for being a true equal partner to Lucy throughout their thirty-eight year marriage.

Born:

Lucy Stone: August 13, 1818 in West Brookfield, Massachusetts.
Henry "Harry" Brown Blackwell: May 4, 1825 in Bristol, England.

Died:

Lucy: At the age of 75, Lucy died on October 18, 1893 in Boston, Massachusetts from stomach cancer.
Henry: Henry died on September 7, 1909 in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

How Lucy and Henry Met:

Henry and Lucy met in 1853 after he heard Lucy speak before the Massachusetts legislature. Like Lucy, Henry was a supporter of women's rights and against slavery. Henry received a letter of introduction from a family friend, met Lucy, and proposed marriage an hour after meeting her. Lucy refused.

Henry: "I wish, as a husband, to renounce all the privileges which the law confers upon me, which are not strictly mutual, and I intend to do so."
Source: Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights. University of Virginia Press. 1930, reprinted 2001. pg. 161.

Andrea Kerr: "After hearing Stone's speech before the legislature, he wrote: 'I shall endeavor to see more of [Stone] before I come West if practicable, as I decidedly prefer her to any lady I have ever met, always excepting the Bloomer costume which I don't like practically, tho theoretically I believe in it with my whole soul -- It is quite doubtful whether I shall be able to succeed in again meeting her, as she is travelling around -- having been born locomotive, I believe.'"
Source: Andrea Moore Kerr. Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. Rutgers University Press. 1992. pg. 65.

Wedding Date:

After a two-year courtship, Lucy and Henry were married before breakfast at 7 am on May 1, 1855 at her family's farmhouse at Coy's Hill in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. Henry wore a "proper white waistcoast" and Lucy was "in a beautiful silk, ashes of roses color" dress.
Source: Andrea Moore Kerr. Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. Rutgers University Press. 1992. pg. 86.

Their wedding vows included 'love and honor' rather than 'obey' and Lucy is said to have cried after saying her vows.

Colonel Higginson: "We had provided a box of greenhouse flowers, but no orange blossoms, being unattainable; but we found that Anna Parsons had supplied that deficiency, and we had everything else, including cloth-of-gold roses ... It was the most beautiful bridal I ever attended."
Source: Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights. University of Virginia Press. 1930, reprinted 2001. pg. 164, 166.

Lucy and Henry's Marriage Protest:

Prior to their wedding, Lucy and Henry jointly signed a statement protesting laws that stripped women of their legal existence. The statement was read at their wedding.

"The Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who performed the marriage, not only read the statement at the ceremony, but also distributed it to other ministers as a model that he urged other couples to follow."
Alice Stone Blackwell: "He [Henry] added his own eloquent voice to hers, and together they made a great team. At last, after two years of arduous courtship, they were married, on May 1, 1855. The famous Protest which they published on this occasion was Mr. Blackwell's idea."
Source: Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights. University of Virginia Press. 1930, reprinted 2001. pg. 161.

Lucy and Henry: "While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.

We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband ... We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power ..."
Source: Jone Johnson Lewis. "Marriage Protest of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell - 1855."

Occupations:

Lucy: Women's rights advocate, editor, lecturer, abolitionist.
Henry: Editor, reformer, and businessman.

Children:

Lucy and Henry had one daughter and a premature baby boy who died at birth in June 1859.

• Alice Stone Blackwell: September 14, 1857. Like her parents, Alice was an editor and reformer. She died on March 15, 1950.

Quotes About the Marriage of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell:

Jone Johnson Lewis: "Two years of courtship and friendship convinced Lucy to accept Henry's offer of marriage. She wrote to him, "A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should her's. My name is my identity and must not be lost."
Source: Jone Johnson Lewis. "A Soul as Free as the Air." WomensHistory.D106.
Henry: "Dearest, you have made me very happy in spite of surface cares & excitements, in feeling for ou a love and esteem, such as you may well prize from your husband. You have ennobled my life. I fear that I have not ennobled your's! But Lucy dear -- I hope to be your's always & forever.
Source: Lucy Stone, Henry Browne Blackwell, and Leslie Wheeler, ed. Loving Warriors: Selected Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853-1893. Dial Press. 1981. pg. 172.

Henry: "My idea of the relation involves no sacrifice of individuality but its perfection -- no limitation of the career of one, or both but its extension ... perfect equality in this relationship ... If both parties cannot study more, think more, feel more, talk more & work more than they could alone, I will remain an old bachelor & adopt a Newfoundland dog or a terrier as an object of affection."
Source: Peggy Cooper Davis. Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values. Hill and Wang. 1998. pgs. 44-45.

Lucy: "I will try in every way I can to aid you, and to make your life too more symmetrical. Dear Harry we can, and will help each other, & we will be forever ..."
Source: Lucy Stone, Henry Browne Blackwell, and Leslie Wheeler, ed. Loving Warriors: Selected Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853-1893. Dial Press. 1981. pg. 113.

Francis J. Garrison: "Seldom have a husband and wife been subjected to more atrocious misrepresentation, calumny and abuse than were they, when they entered into that noble marriage covenant. But they lived to hear the taunts change to tributes, the abuse to praise."Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights. University of Virginia Press. 1930, reprinted 2001. pg. 169.

Henry after Lucy's death: "In behalf of the great principle of equality in marriage, I desire, in this hour of inexpressible bereavement, to say, with all the added emphasis of a life-time's experience, that the Protest read and signed by Lucy Stone and myself on the first day of May, 1855, as a part of our nuptial ceremony, has been the key-note of our married life. After the lapse of more than thirty-eight happy years (how happy, I to-day more keenly realize than ever before), in her behalf and on my own, I wish to reaffirm that declaration."
Source: Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights. University of Virginia Press. 1930, reprinted 2001. pg. 170.