I was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. I was the second oldest of eight children to a local cotton mill owner and his wife. I grew up most of my life in Massachusetts but in the late 1820’s I moved to New York. My parents sent me to study at a Quaker school near Philadelphia. In the late 1830s, my father’s business failed. I returned home to help my family make ends meet. I found work being a teacher. Later, my family and I moved to a farm in Rochester, New York in the mid-1840s.
In the 1840s, my family and I became involved in the fight to end slavery, also known as the abolitionist movement. Around this time, I became the head of the girls’ department at Canajoharie Academy. Leaving the Canajoharie Academy in 1849, I soon devoted more time to social issues. I was also involved in the temperance movement, aimed at limiting or completely stopping the production and sales of alcohol. I was inspired to fight for women’s rights while campaigning against alcohol. I was denied a chance at the temperance convention because I was a woman. Most people thought it was improper for women to give speeches in public.
In 1851, I attended an anti-slavery conference, where I met Stanton. The pair established the Women's New York State Temperance Society in 1852. Before long, we were fighting for women's rights, forming the New York State Woman's Rights Committee. I also started petitions for women to have the right to own property and to vote. In 1856, I began working as an agent for the American Anti- Slavery Society. I spent years promoting the society’s cause up until the Civil War.
I am a suffragist, abolitionist, author, and speaker. I was the president of the National American Women Suffrage Association. I did not only fight against slavery, but I also campaigned against women’s rights and alcohol. I helped fugitive slaves escape and held an anti-slavery rally. Stanton and I gathered signatures to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally abolishing slavery.
In the early 1800s, I published the first volume of History of Women Suffrage a project that she co-edited with Stanton, Ida Husted Harper, and Matilda Joslin Gage. I also helped Harper to record her own story, which resulted in the 1898 work the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: A Story of the Evolution of the Status of Women.
On March 13, 1906, I died at the age of 86 at my home in Rochester, New York. According to I obituary in The New York Times, shortly before I died, I told my friend, Anna Shaw, “To think I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel.”In recognition of my dedication and hard work, the U.S. Treasury Department put a portrait on dollar coins in 1979, honoring me as the first woman.
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