Anthony, Susan B. (1820–1906)

SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY was born into a devout Quaker family in Adams, Massachusetts. The second of eight children of Daniel and Lucy Anthony, she learned to read and write at the age of three. In 1826, the Anthonys moved to Battensville, New York, where Susan attended a local school. She later attended a home school before being sent to boarding school near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Following the economic panic of 1837, the Anthonys declared bankruptcy. Consequently, Anthony took a teaching position in 1839 at Quaker Eunice Kenyon's boarding school in New Rochelle, New York, where she taught for one year. By 1845, her family's financial situation had improved, and her father purchased a farm in Rochester, New York. Anthony lived there until accepting a position in 1846 as the headmistress of female students at Canajoharie Academy. She taught there for two years, earning $110 a year, her first paid position.

Anthony entered the ranks of reformers through the temperance movement. Raised a Quaker, her family believed drinking liquor was sinful. She first joined the Daughters of Temperance while working at Canajoharie Academy, helped found the Women's State Temperance Society of New York in 1848, and became president of the Rochester branch of the Daughters of Temperance in 1849. When the Sons of Temperance refused Anthony the right to speak at the state convention in 1853 because she was a woman, she left the meeting and called her own. She founded the Women's State Temperance Society with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom she met in 1851 at an abolitionist meeting. Anthony and Stanton resigned from the organization after being criticized for their interest in women's rights.

The Anthony family became active in the abolitionist movement after moving to Rochester. Antislavery Quakers met at their farm almost every Sunday, where individuals such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison joined them on occasion. In 1854, Anthony devoted herself to the antislavery movement and became an agent in 1856 for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Anthony and Stanton petitioned Congress for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing universal suffrage for former slaves and women. In 1863, Anthony and Stanton organized the Women's National Loyal League and petitioned for the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery. She campaigned for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, advocating full citizenship for former slaves and women, including the right to vote. Following the Civil War in 1865, Anthony concentrated almost exclusively on women's issues and women's suffrage.

Anthony and Stanton campaigned for more liberal divorce laws in New York. Largely due to their efforts, the New York State Married Women's Property Bill became law in 1860. This allowed married women to own property, keep their own wages, and retain custody of their children. In 1866, Anthony and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association. Two years later, they began publishing the liberal weekly The Revolution, with the motto, “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” The newspaper advocated an eight-hour day and equal pay for equal work. In the 1890s, Anthony served on the board of trustees of Rochester's State Industrial School and raised $50,000 in pledges to ensure the admittance of women to the University of Rochester; they were first admitted in 1900.

Susan B. Anthony was an early suffragist, abolitionist, and feminist who demanded equal rights for blacks and women in America. She posed for a photograph (above) by S.A. Taylor at the turn of the 19th century—sometime in the period of 1880 to 1906.

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