Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) is one of the most widely known suffragist of her generation and has become an icon of the woman’s suffrage movement. She traveled the country to give speeches, circulate petitions, and organize local women’s rights organizations.
Fact 1: The Anthony family moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, they became active in the antislavery movement. Antislavery Quakers met at the Anthony Farm almost every Sunday, sometimes they were joined by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.
Fact 2: In 1848 Susan B. Anthony was working in Canajoharie, New York as a teacher and she became involved with the teacher’s union when she discovered that male teachers were earning a monthly salary of $10.00, while the female teachers only earned $2.50 a month. Her parents and her sister Marry attended the Rochester Woman’s Rights Convention held on August 2, 1848. Her experience with the teacher’s union, temperance and antislavery reforms, and her Quaker upbringing, laid fertile ground for a career in women’s rights reform to grow. It was Lucy Stone’s speech at the Syracuse Convention in 1852 is credited for convincing Anthony to join the women’s rights movement.
Fact 3: Anthony campaigned for women’s property rights in New York State in 1853, speaking at meetings, collecting signatures for petitions, and lobbying the state legislature. She circulated petitions for married women’s property rights and woman suffrage. She addressed the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1854 and urged more petition campaigns.
Fact 4: Stanton, Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869; they focused their efforts on a federal woman’s suffrage amendment. In an effort to challenge suffrage, Anthony and her three sisters voted in the 1872 Presidential election. She was arrested and put on trail, the judge instructed the jury to find her guilty without any debate, and forced a $100 fine. When Anthony refused to pay the fine and the court cost, the judge did not sentence her to prison time, which ended her chance of an appeal.
Fact 5: As a final honor to Susan B. Anthony, the Nineteenth Amendment was named the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. It was endorsed in 1920.
Fact 6: Anthony raised $50,000 in pledges to ensure the admittance of women to the University of Rochester during the 1890s. In a last-minute effort to meet the deadline she put up the cash value of her life insurance policy. The University was then forced to hold true to its promise and women were allowed for the first time in 1900.
Fact 7: Susan B Anthony made her first public speech in 1848 at a Daughters of Temperance supper.
Fact 8: Anthony and Stanton drew attention to the case of Abby McFarland in the 1860’s. McFarland who’s drunken and abusive husband, Daniel, shot and killed the man that she had divorced him to marry. They protested when Daniel was found not guilty of murder on a plea of temporary insanity and then given custody of their son.
Fact 9: Anthony fought in the West in the 1890s to make sure that territories where women had the vote were not blocked from access to the Union. She attended the International Council of Women at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
Fact 10: At the age of 80, Anthony retired as President of NAWSA. In 1904 Anthony supervised over the International Council of Women in Berlin and became honorary president of Carrie Chapman Catt’s International Woman Suffrage Alliance. She died in 1906 at her home on Madison Street in Rochester, New York.
