Susan B. Anthony Recalls Teaching School in Her Old Home Town of Battenville, NY

Susan B. Anthony’s father Daniel built a cotton mill in Adams, Massachusetts, and made it into a success. Teenage girls worked at the mill, and half of them boarded in the Anthony house, which was bustling with activity. “An almost ceaseless round of work – sewing, cleaning, hauling water, preparing three meals a day for as many as sixteen people, and washing up again once they had finished eating,” as biographers Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns described the Anthony house in the book Women of Achievement: Susan B. Anthony. In 1826 Daniel was offered an opportunity to partner in running similar mills in Battenville, NY, and he and his wife Lucy packed up their four children and moved to Battenville. Susan was 6 years old at the time.

The family initially stayed with Daniel’s business partner, Judge John Mc Lean, but that changed. “Business boomed, and in 1832-33 Anthony built a late Federal-style brick house for his family…in Battenville,” according to historian Sandra McClellan. The house was very large – 15 rooms, with space for a store and schoolroom. Susan had just turned thirteen when they moved in, and lived there until the time she was 19 years old, when the Anthonys moved to Center Falls. So Battenville was where she grew up.

David and Phoebe Walsh lived in Battenville, and founded the Methodist Episcopal Church there. Their son John D. Walsh became a minister, and was author of book, The Educational Work of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the South. His older sisters were the same age as Susan, and were her childhood friends in that small town.

Typed letter signed, on her National American Woman Suffrage Association letterhead, Rochester, NY, January 17, 1906, to Rev. J.D. Walsh, relating her memories of the old school, and promising to send her History of Woman Suffrage. “Your letter of the 12th inst. is here. I am surprised that I do not find any record of my sending you the four volumes of the History. It seems to me just as plain as can be that I wrote in them and ordered them packed, but they are not among my receipts and I get no receipt from the office as having paid the express charges, so I shall send you another set by Adams express today. I hope you will get them all right and leave word with whoever has the management of your office for them to acknowledge receipt as soon as possible. I remember now that your father did live in that old house, so you were glad to get the picture of it. Yes, I taught school one or two summers in that school room. We all went there to school, not excepting Merritt the youngest. I do not remember about Mr. Cole's teaching there. It must have been after we left. I hope you will plan so as to visit us during the meeting of the General Missionary Committee next fall. Should it be held in the city and I am here and well, I shall be happy to attend some of the meetings. This is a remarkably warm winter for us.”

An uncommon letter relating to her youthful years in Battenville.