Xplore SB Anthony Birthplace

Learn about the childhood influences from family and community that shaped Susan B. Anthony’s career, her work as a reformer, and the U.S. women’s suffrage movement.

On the rural back roads in the town of Adams, Massachusetts stands a house which was built by Susan B. Anthony’s father, Daniel Anthony, between 1817 and 1818 in the Federal Style using Post-And-Beam construction techniques. Susan and three of her five siblings were born in the house: Guelma (1818), Susan (1820), Hannah (1821), and Daniel (1824).

Susan B. Anthony was born in this house on February 15th, 1820. Susan B. Anthony’s father owned the town’s first whole cloth mill and opened his home to girls who worked for him. These mill employees slept in the attic and were fed and looked after by Susan’s mother, Lucy Read Anthony, with help from Susan and her sisters. In 1827 Daniel Anthony moved the family to Battenville, NY to become a partner in a larger cotton mill.

From 1926 to 1949 the local Society of Quaker Descendants owned the Birthplace. It was sold at auction to the Richardson family who lived in the home until 1984. The house fell into some disrepair before it was purchased in 2006 and underwent a 4-year restoration. In 2010 the house was formally opened to the public as The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum.

This virtual tour provides audiences with a timeline of Susan B. Anthony’s life and career beginning with the early influences from her family, Quaker faith, and local community which shaped her values and inspired her activism. The tour culminates with an explanation of the U.S. Suffrage movement’s final push to pass the 19th Amendment, known by many as “The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum.”