Susan B. Anthony Birthplace and Museum

The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace and Museum opens this month in what had long been a vacant building. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Susan B. Anthony was born here in 1820, two years after the Adams, Massachusetts farmhouse was built. She lived here as a small child, the daughter of a Quaker (see this post from last year about the Quaker Meeting House in Adams), who according to Quaker beliefs and practices, gave young Susan the education most girls did not receive in the early 19th century.

Her family worked for the causes of temperance, anti-slavery, and women’s rights, for which women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony would eventually become famous. In November 1872 she was arrested and put on trial, found guilty, and fined for attempting to vote in the presidential election (in which Ulysses S. Grant won his second term in office). She refused to pay.

Six years later, she wrote what afterwards became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which gave women the right to vote. It was ratified in 1920, some 14 years after Susan B. Anthony’s death in 1906.

Carol Crossed, president of the museum, bought the house at auction. The restoration took two years, and the project promises to be a valuable resource for Adams, and for students of American history.

Note: these photos were taken last year before restoration was completed.

For more on the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace and Museum, have a look at this website.

For more on Susan B. Anthony, have a look here.