# The Biographical Dictionary of America/Anthony, Susan Brownell

​Anthony, Susan Brownell, reformer, was born in South Adams, Mass., Feb. 15, 1820; daughter of Daniel and Lucy (Read) Anthony. Her father, who was a Quaker, removed his family from Massachusetts to Washington county, N.Y., in 1826, where he engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods. His daughters were given a liberal education at a Friends' boarding school in West Philadelphia. In 1835 Susan began to teach school in New York state. Her first speech was made at a meeting of the New York teachers' association in 1853. The speech consisted of but a few sentences, but was an act of unparalleled audacity at that day. Miss Anthony's example wrought a change in the standing of the woman teachers in future conventions. From this time they began to participate in the discussions, and to vote and have a voice in matters pertaining to the profession in which they are so largely in the majority. In 1849 Miss Anthony began to speak in public in behalf of the temperance cause, of which she was an earnest advocate. In 1851, being refused admission to a temperance convention on account of her sex, she called a convention of women to discuss temperance in Albany, N.Y., and in 1852 was mainly instrumental in organizing the Woman's New York State temperance society. She soon realized that the ballot would give to women more power to combat intemperance and other evils than any arguments that she could wield; she therefore became a woman suffragist, and for more than forty years worked steadily for that cause. Miss Anthony's remarkable executive ability, her logical reasoning, and her simple, direct, and pertinent aptitude of expression soon gave her national prominence as an advocate of woman's rights. She was an ardent abolitionist, and in conjunction with her friend and co-worker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, rendered great assistance to the abolition party during the anti-slavery agitation. They obtained hundreds of thousands of signatures to petitions beseeching congress to abolish slavery as a war measure. "Send petitions; they furnish the only background for my ​demands," said Charles Sumner to Miss Anthony. During the years 1854-'55, woman's rights conventions were called by her in each county of the state of New York. In 1858, in a report read before a teachers' convention at Troy, N.Y., she advocated co-education of the sexes, and in 1860 her efforts largely contributed to the passage of an act of the New York legislature giving to married women the guardianship of their children, and the control of their own earnings. In 1867, with Mrs. Stanton, she organized and carried on a campaign in Kansas, and won many votes in favor of woman suffrage. In 1868, in connection with Mrs. Stanton, George Francis Train, Daniel M. Melliss, and Parker Pillsbury, she began to publish in New York The Revolution. This journal was devoted to the promulgation of woman's rights doctrines, and existed but two years, leaving Miss Anthony with heavy debts, which she cancelled in 1876 from the proceeds of her lectures. In 1872 she was arrested for illegally voting at Rochester, N.Y., and was fined one hundred dollars, which fine she, according to her declaration made to the judge, "would never pay." From 1869 she spoke before committees of the U. S. senate, and of the house of representatives of every congress; and after 1882 there was a special committee on woman suffrage in the United States senate with a committee room for its exclusive use. In 1892 she was elected president of the National American woman suffrage association, and still held the office in 1900. She was influential in securing the complete enfranchisement of women in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. She was a delegate to the International congress of women at London, England, in 1899, where she was presented to Queen Victoria, and was the joint editor, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, of The History of Woman Suffrage (1848-1902).