Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum

Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	Adams, Massachusetts
Coordinates	42°36′55″N 73°6′10″W
Built	rt1817 (rt1817)
Architect	Anthony,Daniel
Architectural style	Federal
NRHP reference No.	85000021
Added to NRHP	January 3, 1985

The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum is a historic house museum at 67 East Road in Adams, Massachusetts. It is notable as the birthplace of suffragist Susan B. Anthony in 1820 and for its association with early educators and industrialists in Adams. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The house is now a learning center and museum dedicated to showcasing Susan B. Anthony's early years; one room is dedicated to Anthony's later activist life.

House architecture

Built in 1817, the house is a conventional center hall, 2½-story post and beam colonial in the Federalist style. Twin chimneys rise from the building's center line. A modest 1½-story ell was added onto the rear of the house, and a porch, added onto the side of the rear ell in the 1950s, was enclosed in the 1960s. A barn on the property was replaced by a modern garage, which houses the museum's gift shop. Inside the house, the original floorplan has been retained, with a central hall flanked by large public rooms in front of the house and smaller service rooms in the rear. The rear ell contains two small rooms. Most of the original woodwork has been retained, although one fireplace has been bricked up.

Museum displays

The Birthplace Museum consists of permanent and changing exhibits, showing Susan B. Anthony’s daily family life and influences, such as her Quaker background in the early 19th century, and how the house was originally built and restored. The rooms and displays include Kitchen and Hearth, Daniel Anthony’s store, the Birthing Room, the Portrait Gallery and the Legacy Room.

Kitchen and Hearth depicts the main gathering space for the Anthony family and their dependents, approximately 23 girls who worked in Daniel Anthony’s three-story, 26-loom mill on Tophet Brook across East Road. At least half of the girls lived in the attic of the house.

Daniel Anthony’s store, which Susan’s father ran out of the northeast room of the family home to supply the needs of his textile workers and neighbors, has been recreated the way it may have been in 1817. He sold cloth from his mill and a variety of other goods.

The Birthing Room is where the first five—Guelma, Susan, Hannah, Daniel and Mary—of Daniel and Lucy Anthony’s seven children were born.

The Portrait Gallery displays images of Anthony’s fellow co-suffrage leaders and friends. In addition, Anthony’s personal phrenology reading in 1852 is posted above a her bust on a waist-high stand allowing for a time-period tactile experience.

The Legacy Room contains a timeline from 1820 to 1906, when Anthony died, with the major events of her life and important world events, as well as an artifacts and an ephemera collection. The room contains the following permanent displays:

• Temperance movement. Anthony entered the political arena through the Temperance Movement, one of the great reform movements of the 19th century and where she experienced the relative voicelessness of women in the political process.
• Abolitionism. Anthony was close friends for almost 50 years with Frederick Douglass. In 1852, Anthony began campaigning for women's suffrage and equal pay, was active in abolitionism and the American Anti-Slavery Society, and helped establish the Women's Loyal League and the American Equal Rights Association.
• Suffrage. After working for pay equality, temperance and anti-slavery reform, Anthony focused on the vote for women. In 1851, she collaborated with numerous suffragists, toured the country, making speeches and campaigning for women's property and voting rights.
• Winning the vote. It took 14 years after Anthony's death for the 19th amendment to be ratified and put into law. This exhibit offers insight into the work of Carrie Cat, Alice Paul and many other women who pushed the fight for women's suffrage into the 20th century.

Property ownership

The house remained in Anthony family hands until 1895 when it went through a succession of owners. The Society of Friends Descendants acquired the property in 1926 and established a museum. The building was returned to private hands in 1949. It was privately purchased and restored In 2006 to 2009. It is now home to the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, a 501(c)3, governed by a board of directors and historical advisors and managed by an executive director.

Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute

Further information: Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute

One of the exhibits is about Restellism, a name for abortion that was first heard in a popular lecture, portions of which were reprinted on March 4, 1869, by editors Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury in the pages of Anthony's newspaper The Revolution. The display describes how suffragists took a stance opposing the practice of abortion. It shows 122 references taken from Anthony’s newspaper—mentions of Restellism which offer insight into how the women's rights activists came to oppose this practice.

The owner of the museum is Carol Crossed who is a pro-life feminist and advisory board member of the Susan B. Anthony List. The museum's initial mission statement included "raising public awareness" of Anthony's "wide-ranging legacy" including her being "a pioneering feminist and suffragist as well as a noteworthy figure in the abolitionist, pro-life and temperance movements of the 19th century" (emphasis added.)

A local paper reported that the exhibit about Restellism implies that the rejection of advertisements shows Anthony's personal views about abortion, though Anthony never explicitly stated her opinion about abortion or Restellism. Opening day protesters said the museum's leadership was "inferring upon [Anthony] an unproven historical stance." They also said that the directors were pushing a pro-life agenda. Answering this assertion, Crossed said, "the pro-life views expressed in Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution, will not be excluded from the exhibition."

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Berkshire County, Massachusetts

External links

• Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum website