What do history junkies do for Election Day…what else ...visit historic
landmarks attached to elections and a few years ago I did just that! I decided to take a spin to
Rochester and visit the Susan B. Anthony House!
Few people are well versed in the reality of Anthony’s
struggle for the rights of not only women to vote, but for all the rights of
every individual citizen of the United States of America. Born a Quaker, Anthony used these learned values
and hard work to accomplish her goals.
The Anthony family moved to New York State from Mass. (where
Anthony was born) after the failure of her father’s business. She eventually went into teaching not wanting
to marry and become a “drudge or a doll” teaching for years in Canajoharie.... until making a decision that she needed more in her life. Moving back to her father’s farm near
Rochester, she was given the job of running it.
The farm was a place of some wonder as abolitionists and
free thinkers often visited and stirred Anthony with their stories and no doubt
brought her to her goal in life... which was rights and equality for all.
Banding with a newfound friend and confidant Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, she found the voice to her drive and together the two women set out to
change the world, and they did. From
temperance, to women’s married rights, to abolition and then on to voting
suffrage, they tirelessly worked to give all citizens regardless of color, race
or sex the rights they were supposedly given by the Constitution of the United
States.
Sadly, neither lived to see their work on women’s right to
vote come to fruition.
Anthony did vote once after the 14th Amendment
gave the right to vote to the citizens of the United States, was promptly
arrested and sent to trial. When a fair
trail could not be held in Monroe County because Anthony had spoken about it in
every village and town, the trial was moved to the Ontario County Courthouse in
Canandaigua..
So for fun we visited the Ontario County Courthouse. I had visited it once before to see the Celebration for the continual yearly reestablishment of the
Treaty of 1794... and the polishing of the “Silver Covenant Chain” between the US
Government and the Iroquois Confederacy.
And during that ceremony…..lo and behold a Quaker speaker
spoke on the history of the courthouse, the occasion, and sure enough Susan B. Anthony. She informed those gathered that this courthouse was the place that Anthony was tried for her crime of
voting for President of the United States….could this happen again ladies?
In Norm Dann’s book
“Practical Dreamer” on Gerrit Smith, I
found that after Anthony was fined $100 for her crime of voting, and Gerrit Smith
sent her $100 to cover the fine! However
Anthony vowed that she would never pay one dollar of the fine and didn’t……So
now I wonder what happened to the $100 old Gerrit sent????? Hmm…
Epilogue...........
When another woman activist was not allowed to vote the
women’s rights activist sued (and lost) causing the United States to insert the
Amendment stating that only male citizens could vote.
It was not until 14 years after Susan B. Anthony’s death
that the Constitution was amended giving women the right to vote. (Suffrage)
This year more than any year Susan B. Anthony’s words struck
home: “If we once establish the false
principal that United States citizenship does not carry with it the right to
vote in every state in the Union, there is no end to the petty freaks and
cunning devises that will be resorted to to exclude classes of citizens from
the right of suffrage (to vote).
Come on folks lets get out the vote!
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