The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years — John Shaqi
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
At home the loom and spinning-wheel were never idle. The mill-hands
were boarded, transient travelers cared for, and every possible effort
made to enable the father to secure another foothold, but all in vain.
The manufacturing business was dead, there was no building to call for
lumber, people had no money, and, after a desperate struggle of five
years, the end came and all was lost. Mr. Anthony then spent months in
looking for a suitable location to begin life anew. He went to Virginia
and to Michigan, but found nothing that suited him. He and his wife
made a trip through New York, visiting a number of relatives on the
way, and were persuaded to examine a farm for sale near Rochester. It
proved to be more satisfactory than anything they had seen, and they
decided to take it. Joshua Read who, during all these years, had
carefully protected the portion which his sister, Mrs. Anthony, had
inherited from their father, took this to make the first payment on the
farm.[8] They then returned to Center Falls and began preparations for
what in those times was a long journey.
One warm day in the summer of 1845, several Quaker elders had stopped
to dine at the Anthony home on their way to Quarterly Meeting. Hannah
and Susan were in the large, cool parlor working on the wonderful quilt
which was to be a part of Hannah's wedding outfit, when one of the
elders, a wealthy widower from Vermont, asked Susan to get him a drink.
He followed her out to the well and there made her an offer of
marriage, which she promptly refused. He pictured his many acres, his
fine home, his sixty cows, told her how much she looked like his first
wife, begged her to take time to consider and he would stop on his way
back to get her answer. She assured him that it would be entirely
unnecessary, as she was going with her father and mother to their new
home and did not want to marry. He could scarcely understand a woman
who did not desire matrimony, but was finally persuaded to gather up
his slighted affections and go on to Quarterly Meeting.
On September 4, Hannah was married to Eugene Mosher, a merchant at
Easton. Daniel R. was now clerking at Lenox, Mass., so there were only
Susan, Mary and Merritt to go with the father and mother. All the
relatives bade them good-by as if forever, and the leave-taking was
very sorrowful, for it was the first permanent separation of the
family.
[Footnote 7: In after years Miss Anthony greatly enjoyed attending a
good play.]
[Footnote 8: In 1848, when the law was enacted allowing a married woman
to hold property, it was put in her name and she retained it till her
death.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE FARM HOME--END OF TEACHING.
1845--1850.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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