<P> Lydia Taft (1712--1778), a wealthy widow, was allowed to vote in town meetings in Uxbridge, Massachusetts in 1756 . No other women in the colonial era are known to have voted . </P> <P> The New Jersey constitution of 1776 enfranchised all adult inhabitants who owned a specified amount of property . Laws enacted in 1790 and 1797 referred to voters as "he or she", and women regularly voted . A law passed in 1807, however, excluded women from voting in that state . </P> <P> The demand for women's suffrage emerged as part of the broader movement for women's rights . In England in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a pioneering book called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman . In Boston in 1838 Sarah Grimké published The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, which was widely circulated . In 1845 Margaret Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, a key document in American feminism that first appeared in serial form in 1839 in The Dial, a transcendentalist journal that Fuller edited . </P> <P> Significant barriers had to be overcome, however, before a campaign for women's suffrage could develop significant strength . One barrier was strong opposition to women's involvement in public affairs, a practice that was not fully accepted even among reform activists . Only after fierce debate were women accepted as members of the American Anti-Slavery Society at its convention of 1839, and the organization split at its next convention when women were appointed to committees . </P>

Who started the women's right to vote movement