Abigail Bush

Abigail Norton Bush' (c. 1810 – c. 1899) was an abolitionist and women's rights activist in Rochester, New York. She served as president of the Rochester Women's Rights Convention, which was held in 1848 immediately after the first women's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention. By doing so, Bush became the first woman to preside over a public meeting composed of both men and women in the U.S.

Abigail Norton was born about 1810, attended the orthodox First Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York, and helped her mother with charitable works. In 1831, she converted to become a "Brick Church perfectionist" in the wake of popular evangelical revival meetings featuring Charles Grandison Finney. After conversion, she attended the Second Presbyterian Church, known as the "Brick Church", and worked with the Rochester Female Charitable Society, an organization that provided care for the poor and ill.

Abigail Norton married Henry Bush, a stove manufacturer and a radical abolitionist, in 1833. Within five years, Abigail Bush's name stopped appearing in association with Brick Church activities. Over the next thirteen years, Bush went through childbirth six times, with four children living past infancy.

In a split among abolitionists in 1840, Henry Bush chose to remain with the American Anti-Slavery Society, the faction which accepted women as active members. Abigail Bush grew more sympathetic to radical reform and come-outerism, and withdrew in 1843 from the Brick Church to become active in the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society. Bush was at that time the most prominent ex-Evangelical woman in radical circles.

At the end of the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848, convention-goers from Rochester (Bush did not attend) were moved to hold a similar convention of their own. They convinced Lucretia Mott to stay in New York long enough to be the featured speaker at their convention, as she had been at Seneca Falls.

In Rochester, an Arrangements Committee was chosen to organize the convention, and a small nominating committee was formed within it for the purpose of choosing convention officers. Amy Post, Rhoda DeGarmo and Sarah Fish met in the evening of August 1, 1848 to select a roster of officers composed wholly of females, with Abigail Bush to be president.

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