Return to Susan B. Anthony House

There are so many things to do in Rochester that I never thought I’d want to write about the Susan B. Anthony House again.  But since I visited there twice in the past week, I thought it would bear repeat reflection.  Each time I go, I experience the house anew, either because a different docent tells slightly different stories, or because the people I’m with ask different questions (not, I hope, because my memory is faulty!).  Going twice in one week allowed a very immediate comparison.  The first time, my friend Martha (a long-time Rochesterian who had never been) and I joined a tour already in progress so we missed the introduction in sister Hannah’s house, which serves as the gift shop and welcome center.  The second time, my friends Mary Beth and Lauren, visiting from New York City, and I caught the last tour of the day, and I think for only the second time of the over half-dozen times I've been, we started at the beginning!  (This is because tours are not at a set time – they seem to occur whenever enough arriving visitors and an available docent intersect…)

I was reminded that Miss Anthony first became an activist in the temperance movement (in an era where a woman could not own property, defend herself in court, ask for a divorce, or be granted custody of her children, a husband who drank away his earnings was a cause for grave concern), then moved on to abolition, then to education reform, and finally to women’s suffrage.  Both docents explained how her behind-the-scenes sister Mary enabled her to work for her causes, supporting her and the family house by working as a schoolteacher, and eventually as a principal (although she had to turn the job down initially because the school only relented to her demand for equal pay after one or two male principals, depending on the docent, was deemed inadequate).  The second docent was much more dramatic and complete in her story-telling: knocking on a door to mimic the federal marshal who came to arrest Miss Anthony; and explaining that the Supreme Court judge who traveled to Canandaigua to preside over her trial for voting illegally actually wrote his decision on his train ride up, before handing the jury a ‘directed verdict,’ instructing them to find her guilty.  As a woman, Miss Anthony was not allowed to speak on her own behalf to the all-male jury.

In one of the rooms there is an interesting pair of prints.  Amusingly, one docent described “African Hospitality” as black men welcoming a ship of white men (in actuality, the scene depicts the Africans rescuing the white men from a shipwreck, and even though one of the tourists called this to her attention, she insisted the ship was upright).  This scene is juxtaposed with one called “Slave Trade.”  Obviously, the Africans should have let those white men drown!  I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to volunteer as a docent – to remember all the details and dates and stories.

Mary Beth and Lauren with statue of Susan B. and
Frederick Douglass having tea in the nearby square

While there is a lot of period furniture, very little, sadly, is original, since the house and contents were sold after Susan and Mary died.  But Miss Anthony's bedroom furniture is original, as is the encased black dress that she wore on her annual visits to Washington, D.C., and her iconic alligator purse. Oddly, one tour guide led us out the back of the house (where there was a statute of Miss Anthony) and back into the welcome center through the back, and the other returned us through the fronts (not even a peek at the room with the statue).  Both tours reminded me that even though I might check things off my “to do” list with a mental “been there, done that,” I'm happy when I have out-of-town visitors who provide me an excuse to return, because I just might see something I missed before.