Editing Lucy Stone (section)

== Marriage ==
{{Further|Henry Browne Blackwell}}
Henry Blackwell began a two-year courtship of Stone in the summer of 1853. Stone told him she did not wish to marry because she did not want to surrender control over her life and would not assume the legal position occupied by a married woman. Blackwell maintained that despite the law, couples could create a marriage of equal partnership, governed by their mutual agreement. They could also take steps to protect the wife against unjust laws, such as placing her assets in the hands of a trustee. He also believed that marriage would allow each partner to accomplish more than he or she could alone, and to show how he could help advance Stone's work, he arranged her highly successful western lecturing tour of 1853.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 145, 157-162, 182-85.</ref> Over an eighteen-month courtship conducted primarily through correspondence, Stone and Blackwell discussed the nature of marriage, actual and ideal, as well as their own natures and suitability for marriage. Stone gradually fell in love and in November 1854 agreed to marry Blackwell.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 182-85, 187-88.</ref>
[[File:Young Henry B Blackwell.jpg|thumb|[[Henry Browne Blackwell]]]]
Stone and Blackwell developed a private agreement aimed at preserving and protecting Stone's financial independence and personal liberty. In monetary matters, they agreed that the marriage be like a business partnership, with the partners being "joint proprietors of everything except the results of previous labors." Neither would have claim to lands belonging to the other, nor any obligation for the other's costs of holding them. While married and living together they would share earnings, but if they should separate, they would relinquish claim to the other's subsequent earnings. Each would have the right to will their property to whomever they pleased unless they had children.<ref>Blackwell to Stone, February 12, 1854, and December 22, 1854, in Wheeler, 1981, pp. 76, 108-11.</ref> Over Blackwell's objections, Stone refused to be supported and insisted on paying half of their mutual expenses.<ref>Blackwell to Stone, December 22, 1854, [Aug 28, 1855], and February 7, 1856, in Wheeler, 1981, pp. 110, 144, 155-56; Blackwell to Stone, August 29, 1855, quoted in Million, 2003, p. 198.</ref> In addition to financial independence, Stone and Blackwell agreed that each would enjoy personal independence and autonomy: "Neither partner shall attempt to fix the residence, employment, or habits of the other, nor shall either partner feel bound to live together any longer than is agreeable to both." During their discussion of marriage, Stone had given Blackwell a copy of [[Henry Clarke Wright|Henry C. Wright]]'s book ''Marriage and Parentage; Or, The Reproductive Element in Man, as a Means to His Elevation and Happiness,''<ref>Wright, Henry C., ''Marriage and Parentage; Or, The Reproductive Element in Man, as a Means to His Elevation and Happiness'', 2d ed., 1855.</ref> and asked him to accept its principles as what she considered the relationship between husband and wife should be.<ref>Stone to Blackwell, April 23, [1854], in Wheeler, p. 79.</ref> Wright proposed that because women bore the results of sexual intercourse, wives should govern a couple's marital relations. In accordance with that view, Blackwell agreed that Stone would choose "when, where and how often" she would "become a mother."<ref>Blackwell to Stone, December 22, 1854, in Wheeler, p. 109-10.</ref> In addition to this private agreement, Blackwell drew up a protest of laws, rules, and customs that conferred superior rights on husbands and, as part of the wedding ceremony, pledged never to avail himself of those laws.<ref>Blackwell to Stone, December 22, 1854, and Jan 3, [1855], in Wheeler, 1981, pp. 108, 115-16, 135-36.</ref>

The wedding took place at Stone's home in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on May 1, 1855, with Stone's close friend and co-worker [[Thomas Wentworth Higginson]] officiating. Higginson sent a copy of Stone and Blackwell's Protest to the ''[[Worcester Spy]]'', and from there it spread across the country. While some commentators viewed it as a protest against marriage itself, others agreed that no woman should resign her legal existence without such formal protest against the despotism that forced her to forgo marriage and motherhood or submit to the degradation in which law placed a married woman. It inspired other couples to make similar protests part of their wedding ceremonies.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 195-96.</ref>

=== Keeping her name ===
Stone viewed the tradition of wives abandoning their own surname to assume that of their husbands as a manifestation of the legal annihilation of a married woman's identity. Immediately after her marriage, with the agreement of her husband, she continued to sign correspondence as "Lucy Stone" or "Lucy Stone – only."<ref>Stone note appended to Henry B. Blackwell to Augustus O. Moore, May 26, 1855; Stone to Susan B. Anthony, May 30, 1855; Stone to Antoinette L. Brown, August 18, 1855, all in Blackwell Family Papers, Library of Congress.</ref> But during the summer, Blackwell tried to register the deed for property Stone purchased in Wisconsin, and the registrar insisted she sign it as "Lucy Stone Blackwell." The couple consulted Blackwell's friend, [[Salmon P. Chase]], a Cincinnati lawyer and future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who was not immediately able to answer their question about the legality of her name. So, while continuing to sign her name as Lucy Stone in private correspondence, for eight months, she signed her name as Lucy Stone Blackwell on public documents, and she  allowed herself to be so identified in convention proceedings and newspaper reports. But upon receiving assurance from Chase that no law required a married woman to change her name, Stone made a public announcement at the May 7, 1856, convention of the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] in Boston that her name remained Lucy Stone.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 196, 202, 225-26, 304n. 37.</ref> In 1879, when Boston women were granted the franchise in school elections, Stone registered to vote. But officials notified her that she would not be allowed to vote, unless she added "Blackwell" to her signature. This, she refused to do, and so, she was not able to vote. Because her time and energy were consumed with suffrage work, she did not challenge the action in a court of law.<ref>Kerr, 1992, pp. 203-03.</ref>

=== Children ===
Stone and Blackwell had one daughter, [[Alice Stone Blackwell]], born September 14, 1857, who became a leader of the suffrage movement and wrote the first biography of her mother, ''Lucy Stone: Pioneer Woman Suffragist.''<ref>Blackwell, Alice Stone. [https://books.google.com/books?id=3uvbSK2W3JoC ''Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman's Rights.''] 1930. Reprint, University Press of Virginia, 2001. {{ISBN|0-8139-1990-8}}.</ref> In 1859, while the family was living temporarily in Chicago, Stone miscarried and lost a baby boy.<ref>Wheeler, 1981, pp. 173, 185. {{Full citation needed|date=February 2018}}</ref>