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“Keeping Susan B. Anthony’s vision alive and relevant is our work and our passion.”
17 Madison Street
The newsletter for the members of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House
a National Historic Landmark
17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY
Phone: 585-235-6124
www.susanbanthonyhouse.org
Mark your calendars:
17
17 Madison
Madison Street
Street
December
December 2014
2014
A message from our membership director
 December 24 & 25
As 2014 comes to an end, I would like to thank you for your generous
support of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House.
 January 1, 2015
It is because of you that we are able to accomplish so much! Each year,
visitors from all over the country and throughout the world come to 17
Madison Street to be inspired by Susan B. Anthony’s story, while each
month thousands visit our website to learn more about the great
reformer.
Christmas Eve &
Christmas Day
Museum & House closed,
including Administrative
Offices
New Year’s Day
Museum & House closed,
including Administrative
Offices
 January 12, 2015
Monday Lecture Series
Angela Clark-Taylor,
Susan B. Anthony Institute
for Gender & Women’s
Studies, U of R,
“A Collector’s Tale:
Memorabilia of the American
Women’s Suffrage
Movement”
12:00 pm Lunch
2:00 pm Tea
For special occasions
all year round,
give a gift of inspiration—
membership in the
National Susan B. Anthony
Museum & House!
LIKE US on FACEBOOK!
Facebook/
susanbanthonyhouse
As we look forward to a new year of growth at the National Susan B.
Anthony Museum & House, we hope you will continue to stand with us
as we open the door to inspiration!
Lesia Telega
Your continued support makes it possible for us to share the story of
Susan B. Anthony and her lifelong work for human rights.
I wish each and every one of you a very happy Holiday Season and a wonderful New Year!
As always, thank you!
“What inspires you about the Susan B. Anthony House?”
Michelle Huckaby Vierk, docent and portrayer of Ida B.
Wells Barnett, describes how 17 Madison Street inspires her:
Members of the Afghan women’s
cycling team
“I’m inspired by Susan B. Anthony and her fight for women’s
justice and that she saw the future and realized that nothing is
impossible.
She created a world of freedom for all of us. She was very brave,
strong in her faith, and she broke down the walls for all—even
today.”
Michelle Huckaby Vierk
Thanks to Susan B, We Can Reach for the Stars!
Please join us at the
Annual Susan B. Anthony Birthday Luncheon
A Celebration of Stellar Women
Keynote Speaker:
Lynn Sherr
17 Madison Street
is published periodically for the
members of the
Susan B. Anthony
Museum & House.
Membership Director:
Lesia Telega
President and CEO:
Deborah L. Hughes
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Save the dates—
Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center
123 East Main Street
Rochester, New York
To purchase online please visit our website:
www.susanbanthonyhouse.org
Lynn Sherr
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
& author of Sally Ride: America’s
First Woman in Space
17 Madison Street
2
17 MadisonPage
Street
This Month in History:
“Christmas with Susan B. Anthony” by Mary M. Huth
O
n Christmas day 1897 a reporter from the Rochester
Herald called at 17 Madison Street and concluded that
“Few of the people in this city are remembered in a more
kindly way by old St. Nicholas than is Susan B. Anthony, the
venerable Woman Suffragist leader of Rochester.” To the
reporter’s question of whether her friends remembered
her, Anthony replied, “You may say that I have been very
kindly remembered. I have received many messages from
my friends in different parts of the country, and quite a
number of substantial Christmas presents, all of which I
value very highly.” The article went on to say that Anthony
had spent a quiet Christmas day at home reflecting on the
work of the year and wondering about the prospects for
the coming year and “how soon the great object for which
she has been striving faithfully for so many years is coming.”
In the evening Anthony and her sister Mary visited old
friends, walking the distance between Madison Street and
Plymouth Avenue to call upon Sarah L. Willis and Mary
Hallowell.
For much of her life Susan B. Anthony was away from her
family and too busy to take much notice of the holiday
season. From New York City she wrote Gerrit Smith on
December 25, 1872, to discuss the finances of her
upcoming trial without once mentioning the word
Christmas. And on Christmas day, 1889 from Washington,
DC she wrote her long-time friend Rachel Foster Avery a
letter that was all business except for a very brief
Christmas greeting at the end. Anthony herself observed in
an 1899 interview with the Rochester Herald that “we
Quakers don’t make much of Christmas.”
all women!!” It is certain that all who sent Christmas
presents to Susan B. Anthony were more than pleased with
her return gift. And in 1898 she found another perfect
Christmas gift: copies of her newly published biography,
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. She sent out seventy
inscribed copies and wrote to her niece Lucy, “It is such a
pleasure for once to have something to send my relatives &
friends that I know they have not already!”
Perhaps it was Susan B. Anthony’s decision in 1891 to take
up housekeeping and spend more time at 17 Madison
Street with her sister Mary that helped make the holidays
more meaningful. On New Year’s Day, 1892 she wrote in
her diary of the dinner party she had hosted for several
guests. “it was-it is-very pleasant to have our own New
Year’s dinner at our very own table,” she concluded. On
December 26, 1896 she wrote the California artist William
Keith and his wife Mary about another quiet dinner she and
Mary had enjoyed at home the previous day. But having just
returned from a suffragist campaign in California she
couldn’t but help reflect that in that sunny clime people
were celebrating the holidays with fresh fruits and
vegetables and flowers in bloom while in Rochester “crisp
weather” was causing everyone to “slip & slide and tumble
on the ice & snow.” Despite the drawbacks, she concluded
“It is good to be with my very own & only living sister in
our very own old house & home!!”
In Susan B. Anthony: Her Personal History and Her Era (NY:
Doubleday, 1954), Katherine Anthony writes that it wasn’t
until her late seventies that Susan B. Anthony “discovered
the joy of the Christmas spirit.” It was in 1895 that
Katherine Anthony believed that Anthony fist gave presents
-pocket handkerchiefs to each member of Rachel Foster
Avery’s family “to put on the Christmas tree from Aunt
Susan.” Apparently the handkerchiefs were a great success
for she sent them to the Averys and other family members
every year thereafter.
A Rochester Herald reporter returned to 17 Madison Street
on Christmas day, 1899. “My friends are kind enough to
remember me every year at this time,” said Anthony as she
displayed some of the gifts that have arrived at the house.
Among then was a birthday book from Brigham Young’s
daughter, Susan Young Galen, and from John Hooker,
husband of Anthony’s long-time friend Isabella Beecher
Hooker, a copy of his recently published autobiography.
From her brother Daniel in Leavenworth, Kansas came a
set of silver knives and forks with pearl handles, a soup
ladle and fruit spoons and from her niece Lucy a knife to
peel oranges. As usual, many of Anthony’s great circle of
friends sent generous checks to help support women’s
suffrage.
Gifts were a problem. Anthony explained in a December
28, 1896 letter to Isabel Howland that is was impossible for
her to reciprocate all the Christmas gifts she received.
“Well all I can hope to give in return is the little I have
done and may do to make the world’s conditions better for
This Christmas we hope Susan B. Anthony’s friends will be
“kind enough to remember” her again with donations to
the Susan B. Anthony House. Like Isabel Howland we
already have our gift from her: a life dedicated to making
“the world’s condition better for all women.”
News from the museum shop
It’s extra special to be a member of
the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House
during the month of December!
As a member you receive a 20% discount
through December 31, 2014!
The online coupon code is MEMDEC20
Just enter it at checkout.
Happy shopping!