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 house is now a learning center and museum dedicated to showcasing Susan B. Anthony's early years.

Daniel Read Anthony, Susan's father, was an influential member of the local Quaker community, taught in the local school, and helped establish Adams Academy, a secondary school. He and his brother also built one of the first mills in Adams in 1822, before the family left the area for Upstate New York in 1825.

About the house

Built in 1817, the house is a conventional center hall 2.5 story colonial in the Federalist style. Twin chimneys rise from the building's center line, and a modest 1.5 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 A barn has been replaced by a modern garage on the property. 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. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Museum displays

The museum shows Susan B. Anthony’s daily family life and influences, such as her Quaker background, in the early 19th century and how the house was restored in 2006-2009 and museum consists of permanent and changing exhibits. The rooms include Kitchen and Heath, 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 26-loom mill on Tophet Brook, across East Road.

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.

The Birthing Room is where the first five of Anthony’s seven children were born.

The Portrait Gallery holds reproductions of Anthony family members and friends.

The Legacy Room contains a timeline from 1820 to 1906 with the major events of Anthony’s life and important world events; an artifacts collection with period pieces; and ephemera, including suffrage postcards and meeting notices, which provide insight into the issues for which early feminists advocated, such as:

• The 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. She began advocating for suffrage as a means to influence moral and social reforms.

• Abolitionism. Slavery was among the most pressing moral question of the mid-19th century, and the Civil War resulting from disputes around it, tore the nation apart.

• Suffrage. Anthony devoted her life to women’s suffrage. It took 14 years after her death for the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote to be ratified and put into law.

History

The first of the Anthonys to arrive in Adams, Massachusetts was David Anthony, the great-grandfather of Susan B. Anthony, in the years before the American Revolutionary War. He came as part of a more general migration of Quakers to the area from Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. He established a cider mill that remains in the Anthony family to this day. His grandson, David Anthony, built this house in 1817 as a gift to his son, Daniel Anthony, the father of Susan B. Anthony. David was a strong proponent of education, teaching at the East Road School, and joining with others in the tightly knit Quaker community to found the Adams Academy in 1825 on land owned by his father. Daniel Anthony also continued the family interest in mills, establishing a cotton yarn-producing mill, known as the Pump Log Mill, in 1822.

It is in this house that his second child, Susan B. Anthony, was born on February 15, 1820. In 1827 he was lured by financial interests to Battenville, New York.

The house remained in Anthony family hands until 1895, after which 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 underwent restoration from 2006 to 2009. It is now home to the nonprofit Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, showcasing Susan B. Anthony's early years and her legacy as a tireless advocate of women's right to vote.

Restellism exhibit controversy

Further information: Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute

One of the exhibits is about Restellism, a name for abortion that was coined in the pages of Anthony's newspaper The Revolution. The display describes how suffragists took a stance opposing Restellism, the then illegal practice of abortion in the 19th century. 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 describes itself as being "dedicated to preserving the birthplace and raising public awareness of the wide-ranging legacy of the great social reformer, Susan B. Anthony, who was a pioneering feminist and suffragist as well as a noteworthy figure in the abolitionist, opposition to Restellism (opposition to abortion), and temperance movements of the 19th century."

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