Susan's early influences
Susan's father, Daniel Anthony, a Quaker, had married Lucy Read, a Baptist, and their relative prosperity formed a solid backround in which she and her two brothers and three sisters (another died in infancy) grew up. "I had all the freedom I wanted from the time I was a child," she later said of her backround, constantly pointing out that at the Friends Meeting House, men and women were treated as equals. In the mid-1800s, that was unique.
The letters and memories recall a deeply loving family, genuinely close and respectful of one another. Once, when Susan and her sisters persuaded their father to stay in town to hear a concert with them, he told them on the drive home "Never again ask me to do such a thing; I suffered more in thinking about your mother at home alone than any enjoyment could possibly contenplate." Susan remembered her mother as a kindly soul who "Never asked me to stop at home when she was living, not even when she became feeble, but always said, 'Go and do all the good you can.' "
Until her own death, Susan B. Anthony would annualy record in her diary the anniversaries of the days her mother and father had died-tender, aching tributes to the very foundations of her life.
Her father proved the stronger influence on her career. Although his Quaker convictions against a government that went to war kept him from voting untill 1860 ( when the evils of slavery drove him to the polls), he early urged his very headstrong daughter to follow her own insticts and was often ahead of her in the path of social justice.
The letters and memories recall a deeply loving family, genuinely close and respectful of one another. Once, when Susan and her sisters persuaded their father to stay in town to hear a concert with them, he told them on the drive home "Never again ask me to do such a thing; I suffered more in thinking about your mother at home alone than any enjoyment could possibly contenplate." Susan remembered her mother as a kindly soul who "Never asked me to stop at home when she was living, not even when she became feeble, but always said, 'Go and do all the good you can.' "
Until her own death, Susan B. Anthony would annualy record in her diary the anniversaries of the days her mother and father had died-tender, aching tributes to the very foundations of her life.
Her father proved the stronger influence on her career. Although his Quaker convictions against a government that went to war kept him from voting untill 1860 ( when the evils of slavery drove him to the polls), he early urged his very headstrong daughter to follow her own insticts and was often ahead of her in the path of social justice.