Born on August 7, 1813, in Bloomfield, New York, Paulina Kellogg grew up from 1817 on the frontier near Niagara and from 1820, when her parents died, in the home of a strict and religious aunt in LeRoy, New York. Her plan to become a missionary was abandoned when she married Francis Wright, a merchant of Utica, New York, in January 1833. The two were active and enthusiastic supporters of temperance, abolition, women╒s rights, and other reforms. They helped organize an antislavery convention held in Utica in October 1835 and endured mob violence for their pains. After her husband╒s death in 1845 Wright continued active in reform work. For a time she toured with a lecture on physiology and hygiene, using an imported female mannequin for demonstrations.
In April 1849 Wright married Thomas Davis, a jewelry maker and Democratic politician of Providence, Rhode Island. She took the lead in planning and arranging the first National Woman╒s Rights Convention, over which she presided in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. She accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C., when he served a term in Congress in 1853╨1855 and while there, in February 1853, she established Una, one of the first women╒s-rights periodicals. Una continued to appear, with the editorial assistance of Caroline Dall, until late in 1855. In 1868 Davis was among the founders of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. In the 1869 split of the national suffrage movement she followed Susan B. Anthony into the National Woman Suffrage Association. She played a large part in organizing the association╒s convention in New York City in 1870. In 1859 and again in 1871 she traveled to Europe to study painting. She died in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 24, 1876.
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