The Anti-Masonic party arose after the disappearance in 1826 of William Morgan (1776-1826), a Freemason of Batavia, N.Y., who had become dissatisfied with the order and had planned to publish its secrets. When his purpose became known, Morgan was subjected to frequent annoyances, and finally in September, 1826, he was seized and conveyed by stealth to Ft. Niagara, where he disappeared. His ultimate fate was never known, though it was believed at the time that he had been murdered. The event created great excitement, and furnished the occasion for the formation of a new party in N.Y. This new party was in fact a rehabilitation of the Adams wing of the Democratic-Republican party, a feeble organization, into which shrewd political leaders breathed new life by utilizing the Anti-Masonic feeling. The party spread into other middle states and into New England; in 1827 the N.Y. leaders tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Henry Clay, though a Mason, to renounce the order and become the party's candidate for president. In 1831 the Anti-Masons nominated William Wirt of Maryland, and in the election they secured the seven electoral votes of Vermont. In the following year the organization grew moribund, most of its members joining the Whigs. Its last act in national politics was to nominate William Henry Harrison for president in Nov. 1838. Subsequently, Rochester became the centre of the Abolitionist movement in New York State and for many years before the Civil War it was a busy station on the "Underground railroad," by which fugitive slaves were assisted in escaping to Canada. The fervor of the movement gave prominence to Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), the mulatto orator and editor, who established a newspaper in Rochester in 1847, and to whom a monument has been erected near the approach of the New York Central Station. The city was a gathering place for suffragists from the time when Susan B. Anthony settled here in 1846. Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906), born at Adams, Mass., was the daughter of Quaker parents. Her family moved to N.Y. State where, from the time she was 17 until she was 32, she taught school. She took a prominent part in the Anti-slavery and Temperance movements in New York, and after 1854 devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for women's rights. She was vice-president-at-large of the National Women's Suffragist Association from 1869-1892, when she became president. She was arrested and fined $100 (which she never paid) for casting a vote at the presidential election in 1872. She contended that the 14th Amendment entitled her to vote, and when she told the court she would not pay her fine, the judge simply let her go. The case created much comment.