Susan B. Anthony: Abolitionist, Temperance Advocate, and Suffragist

Key facts

• Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts.
• She was raised in Battenville, New York, and later Rochester, New York.
• She could read and write by age three and attended the Friends' Seminary near Philadelphia.
• Anthony hosted abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison at her family farm.
• She formed the Women's New York State Temperance Society after being denied a speaking role at a temperance meeting.
• She met Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851 at an antislavery meeting in Seneca Falls.
• They co-founded the American Equal Rights Association and its newspaper, The Revolution.
• Anthony opposed the 14th and 15th Amendments for not including women.
• She co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and later helped merge it into the National American Women's Suffrage Association.
• She voted in the 1872 presidential election, was arrested, and tried; the judge directed a guilty verdict.
• She refused to pay the $100 fine.
• She worked on the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage in the 1880s.
• She helped create the International Council of Women, recognized by Queen Victoria, Empress Augusta Victoria, and President Grover Cleveland.
• She spoke at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.
• She died on March 13, 1906.
• The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, was nicknamed the Susan B. Anthony amendment.
• She was honored on a U.S. stamp in 1920 and on a coin in 1979.
• Her childhood homes are museums; the Rochester home is a National Historic Landmark.
• In 2025, the Trump administration issued a statement praising her.