Susan Brownell Anthony was born on
February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts.
She was born to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read and had one older and five
younger siblings. It seems natural for
her to become an activist because her family cared a great deal about social
reform.
Ms. Anthony’s father was a
Quaker as well as an abolitionist and a temperance advocate. Her mother was not a Quaker but was tolerant
of her husband’s religious tradition. Her
father insisted that his sons and daughters be self-supporting; he gave them responsibilities
at a young age and taught them business principles. Her two brothers, Daniel and Merritt, moved
to Kansas to support the anti-slavery movement there. Merritt was with John Brown in his battle
against pro-slavery forces, and Daniel became a newspaperman and mayor of
Leavenworth. Her sister Mary became a
public school principal in Rochester as well as a woman’s rights activist. In later years Susan and Mary shared a home.
Ms. Anthony went to school at
The Friends’ Boarding School in the Black Hill section of Plainfield,
Connecticut. She was sent to a Quaker
boarding school in Philadelphia when she was seventeen years old but attended
only one term due to family financial problems.
She left school to teach at a Quaker boarding school to assist her
family.
The Anthony
family moved to a farm outside Rochester, New York, in 1845. They became acquainted with some social
reformers who had left their Quaker congregation; they formed the
Congregational Friends in 1848. Local
activists gathered to the Anthony farm on Sunday afternoons; Frederick
Douglass, a former slave and prominent abolitionist, became a lifelong friend
to Ms. Anthony.
Ms. Anthony moved to Canajoharie
in 1846 to become the headmistress of the female department of the Canajoharie
Academy. At age 26 this was the first
time for her to live away from the influences of Quakers. She began to wear more stylish dresses and
stopped using the traditional forms of speech used by the Quakers. She was interested in social reform; she was
especially interested in equal pay for equal work.
Ms. Anthony became the manager
of the family farm in Rochester when the Canajoharie Academy closed in
1849. This allowed her father to spend
more time in his insurance business.
After a couple of years, she was increasingly drawn to reform
activity. Her parents’ supported her
desire to become fully engaged in reform work and lived almost entirely on
speaking fees for the rest of her life.
Embarking on her career of
social reform, Ms. Anthony schooled herself in reform issues. She was drawn to people with more radical
ideas, such as William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson, and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. Ms. Anthony and Ms. Stanton
became lifelong friends. “Soon she was
wearing the controversial Bloomer dress, consisting of pantaloons worn under a
knee-length dress. Although it was more
sensible than the traditional heavy dresses that dragged the ground, she
reluctantly quit wearing it after a year because it gave her opponents the
opportunity to focus on her apparel rather than her ideas.”
Ms. Anthony was heavily involved
in civil rights issues for slaves and women.
She “traveled extensively in support of women’s suffrage, giving as many
as 75 to 100 speeches per year and working on many state campaigns. She worked
internationally for women’s rights as well.
“When she first began
campaigning for women’s rights, Anthony was harshly ridiculed and accused of
trying to destroy the institution of marriage.
Public perception of her changed radically during her lifetime,
however. Her 80th birthday
was celebrated in the White House at the invitation of President William
McKinley. She became the first
non-fictitious woman to be depicted on U.S. currency when her portrait appeared
on the 1979 dollar coin.”
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