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Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html
Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 1998
Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms997009
Latest revision: 2007 August
Correspondence, 1846-1905, n.d. | |||||||||||||
Daybook and Diaries, 1856-1906 | |||||||||||||
Scrapbooks, 1876-1934 | |||||||||||||
Speeches and Writings, 1848-1895 | |||||||||||||
Addition, 1883-1896 | |||||||||||||
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.
The papers of Susan B. Anthony, reformer and suffragist, were given to the Library of Congress primarily by Lucy E. Anthony, Ann Anthony Bacon, and others from 1940 to 1964. An addition to the collection includes items received by the Library through gift and purchase in 1987 and 1990.
The papers of Susan B. Anthony were arranged and described in 1971. Additional material was incorporated into the collection in 1978 and 1994.
A photograph of Anthony, given to the Library in 1988, has been transferred to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division where it is identified as a part of these papers.
The Library's Rare Book and Special Collections Division has custody of Susan B. Anthony's personal library. Among the more than 250 volumes are thirty-four scrapbooks compiled by Anthony, some of which were transferred from the Manuscript Division. The scrapbooks are available on seven reels of microfilm for purchase or loan through the Microform Reading Room.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of Susan B. Anthony is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.)
A microfilm edition of these papers is available on seven reels. Consult a reference librarian in the Manuscript Division concerning availability for purchase or interlibrary loan.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container or reel number, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Date | Event |
| 1820, Feb. 15 | Born near Adams, Mass. |
| 1837-1838 | Student, Friends seminary near Philadelphia, Pa. |
| 1839 | Teacher, Eunice Kenyon's Friends Seminary, New Rochelle, N.Y. |
| 1846 | Headmistress, Female Department, Canajoharie Academy, Rochester, N.Y. |
| 1848 | Joined the Daughters of Temperance in Canajorarie, N.Y.; by Mar. 1849 had become Presiding Sister of the Montgomery Union, No. 29, of the Daughters of Temperance in Canajoharie, a position she also held after moving to Rochester, N.Y., and joining that city's union in mid-1849 |
| 1849 | Managed family farm |
| 1851 | Met Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
| 1852 | Formed the Woman's New York State Temperance Society |
| 1853 | Helped organize the
“Whole World's Temperance Convention” Helped a group of Rochester, N.Y., seamstresses draft a code of fair wages for working women in the city |
| 1854 | Organized and participated in a canvass to obtain signatures on petitions demanding woman suffrage and improvement of the Married Woman's Property Law in New York |
| 1856 | Principal New York agent, American Anti-Slavery Society |
| 1866 | Corresponding secretary, American Equal Rights Association |
| 1868-1870 | Published the Revolution, a weekly periodical edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others |
| 1869 | Organized a woman's suffrage convention,
Washington, D.C. Formed, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the National Woman Suffrage Association |
| 1872 | Voted illegally for president |
| 1876 | Presented a “Woman's Declaration of 1876” with two colleagues at the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pa. |
| 1881-1902 | Financed and coedited first four volumes of History of Woman Suffrage (New York, Fowler & Wells, 1881-[1922] 6 vols.) |
| 1888 | Founded the International Council of Women |
| 1890 | Settled in
Rochester, N.Y. Vice president at large, National American Woman Suffrage Association |
| 1892-1900 | President, National American Woman Suffrage Association |
| 1892 | Trustee, State Industrial School, Rochester, N.Y. |
| 1895-1896 | Campaigned in California to secure the vote for women |
| 1898 | Collaborated in the preparation of The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Indianapolis, Bowen-Merrill Co., 1898-1908. 3 vols.), by Ida H. Harper |
| 1900 | Helped open the University of Rochester, N.Y., to women |
| 1904 | Founded, with Carrie Chapman Catt, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance |
| 1906, Mar. 13 | Died, Rochester, N.Y. |
The papers of Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) span the period from 1846 to 1934, although the bulk of the material dates from 1846 to 1906. The papers include correspondence, a daybook, diaries, scrapbooks, speeches, and miscellaneous items.
A volume of correspondence is dated 1846-1905 and consists primarily of Anthony's letters to Rachel Foster Avery concerning the details of Anthony's extensive lecture circuit, her finances, the activities of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and her work on the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage which she coedited with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others. The file also includes several letters from Anthony to the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw and letters from Wendell Phillips. Although most letters concern suffrage, a few deal with personal and family matters.
A daybook, 1856-1860, records the financial account Anthony kept of her work for the American Anti-Slavery Society, woman's rights, and personal expenditures for postage, room and board, travel, advertising, rent for lecture halls, and other items. Twenty-five volumes of diaries span the period from 1865 to 1906 with some gaps and omissions. For the most part, the diaries contain brief notations of Anthony's activities and a financial record kept in the back of each volume. Other topics noted in the diaries include family matters, African-American and woman suffrage, lecture tours, and important events of the day, such as Lincoln's assassination. Among her associates mentioned in the diaries are Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Lucretia Mott, Parker Pillsbury, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone.
Six scrapbooks assembled by her sister, Mary S. Anthony, contain clippings from newspapers published in all parts of the United States with a heavy concentration of those from New York state and Washington, D.C. Memorabilia for the period 1876-1934 is also included. The scrapbooks primarily document the activities of Susan B. and Mary S. Anthony in behalf of woman suffrage, especially the conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. The scrapbooks also contain biographical articles on Anthony and her associates in the suffrage movement and articles on women in higher education and professional employment, particularly in law, medicine, and journalism.
Manuscripts of speeches and other writings complete the collection. Anthony's early focus was temperance and abolition as well as women's suffrage and education. The manuscripts date from her first public address in 1848 to 1895 when she was presented with part one of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible (New York, European Pub. Co., 1895-1898).
Two letters were added to the collection in 1997. A photocopy of a letter dated 1883 from Anthony to Mary Kimball Rogers concerns a speech she thought had been lost in Omaha, Nebraska. A typed letter dated 1896 from Anthony to Adelaide Johnson concerns the charges of illegality that were raised when Johnson's marriage ceremony was performed by a woman. Anthony's lobbying effort to have statues placed in the United States Capitol of herself, Stanton, and Mott as the founders of the woman suffrage movement is also noted in her letter to Johnson.
The collection is arranged in five series:
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