Category: 17 Madison Street

Aimee Kuiper

Meet: John Van Voorhis

While our Carriage House has been under construction, many guests might have noticed a new addition in the well-known Front Parlor of 17 Madison Street.

This room has become the temporary location for this bust of attorney John Van Voorhis. Van Voorhis was born in Decatur, New York, in 1826. He passed the bar in 1851 and began practicing in Elmira, New York. Later, he moved to Rochester and opened his own practice in 1854. He defended people like abolitionist Frederick Douglass and assisted the Seneca Nation in land disputes. 

Van Voorhis was Susan B. Anthony’s lead defense attorney when she was tried and convicted of voting in the presidential election of 1872. 

He also served three terms as a United States Congressman between 1879 and 1895. 

A Chicago artist, Robert Lee MacCameron, was hired to paint a portrait of Van Voorhis. MacCameron has pieces at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, and museums in England and France. He is most notable for painting a portrait of President William Howard Taft.

It was typical for the artist to live in residency, so he lived with the Van Voorhis family in their Rochester home. While there, MacCameron started a relationship with Van Voorhis’ daughter Louise, and the two later married. 

The newlyweds moved to Paris, where MacCameron continued his art education at the Beaux Arts School and received several prestigious awards for his work. 

Upon their return to Rochester, MacCameron sculpted a marble bust of his Father-in-Law, which is currently in the Ontario County Courthouse, where Susan B. Anthony’s trial was held. This bronze cast is of the original marble bust. The Van Voorhis descendants donated the bronze bust to the Anthony Museum in 2021.

We hope you visit the museum and say hi to John! 

Aimee Kuiper

The Meaning Behind Susan B.’s Vote

Susan B. Anthony knew it was illegal to vote as a woman in 1872, so why did she do it? More than just a passionate statement, Susan B. planned this moment in history as a strategic bid for publicity in a world that largely ignored woman’s suffrage.

The suffragists did nothing by accident. On the day that Susan B. voted, suffragists across the United States (including influential figures like Sojourner Truth) marched to the polls and attempted to cast their ballot using the language of the 14th Amendment, which stated that all citizens have the right to vote. These women weren’t hoping to sneak under the radar with their “loophole”; instead, they used this message as a nation-wide protest. As woman after woman was turned away from the polls, people and papers started talking about woman’s suffrage. 

On Madison Street, Susan B., her sister Mary, and the group of women with them were prepared to face ridicule, reporters, and stubborn opposition. The band was formed of older activists like Rhoda DeGarmo, single women and mothers, younger ladies like Charlotte Bowles Anthony and Margaret Garrigues Leyden, and next-door neighbor Sarah Cole Truesdale. Of the local women who voted on November 5th, none received more backlash than Susan B. herself. Initially, poll workers and officers were cautious in their reactions, unsure of how to handle these polite, feminine law-breakers. Susan B. Anthony knew that this moment could not be lost to history however, and she took every chance she could to spread the word about what she had just done. On November 18th, she was arrested by a local sheriff and told to show up to her trial in a few months.

Since she was not detained prior to her trial, Susan B. traveled locally, delivering her famous “Is It a Crime for a Citizen to Vote?” speech. Newspapers quickly caught on, and the story spread like wildfire. All sorts of opinions about woman’s suffrage began landing on people’s doorsteps, ranging from slander and insults to confusion to praise and admiration. One thing was certain: all of Rochester was talking about women’s roles in civics and soon, the whole nation would follow suit.

DHughes

Remember Susan B. Anthony on March 13

sba_fullOn March 13, 1906, at forty minutes past midnight, Susan B. Anthony died at the age of 86 in her own bed on the second floor of the house on Madison Street, her home of 40 years.

At her request, much of the ceremonial mourning of the day was not observed: no shades were drawn, no black crepe hung. Only a simple wreath of violets was placed on the front door. For two days, close friends and family came to call. Then on March 15, the world said good-bye at an immense funeral held in Central Presbyterian Church (now the Hochstein School of Music). Amid a raging blizzard, thousands of mourners filled the church and over ten thousand more passed by her flag-draped coffin that was flanked by an honor guard of women students from the University of Rochester—the school she’d finally opened up to them in 1901. Next to the coffin was a silk suffrage flag with four gold stars, representing the only states where women then could vote; pinned on her breast was a jeweled flag pin with four diamond stars, a gift from women of Wyoming, the first in our nation to win the vote, thanks to all of her efforts on their behalf.IMG_3042

The Rochester newspaper of the day reported: “Rochester made no secret of its personal grief. There must have been people of every creed, political party, nationality, and plane of life in those long lines that kept filing through the aisles of Central Church. The young and the aged of the land were represented. Every type was there to bow in reverence, respect and grief. Professional men, working men, financiers came to offer homage. Women brought little children to see the face of her who had aimed at being the emancipator of her sex, but whose work had ended just as victory seemed within reach. Priests, ministers…, rabbis …, came to look upon her who had more than once given them inspiration in dark moments.”

The service in the church lasted an hour and a half. It took another 2 or more hours for the thousands of mourners to file past the coffin. Finally, in late afternoon, with the snowstorm still raging, Susan B’s most intimate friends and relatives accompanied her to her final resting place in Mt. Hope Cemetery. There, beneath a simple white stone engraved only with her name and dates, she was laid to rest. The final words were spoken by her dear friend, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who in tender and reverent voice, pronounced these solemn words: “Dear friend, thou hast tarried with us long; thou has now gone to thy well-earned rest. We beseech the Infinite Spirit who has upheld thee to make us worthy to follow in thy steps and carry on the work. Hail and farewell.”

Some years earlier, during a family reunion at her birthplace in Adams, Massachusetts, Susan B. Anthony had written her own epitaph. As the family gathered out in the yard on a glorious summer day, amid the horse-drawn carriages of all those who had come to call, someone remarked that the scene looked like a funeral. Anthony immediately replied:

“When it is a funeral, remember that I want there should be no tears.
Pass on, and go on with the work.”

Please join us for a memorial wreath ceremony on Monday, March 13, at 11:45 am. The short ceremony will be followed by a Lunch and Lecture in our Carriage House (that event is sold out). The wreath hanging is free and open to the public. Dress for the weather.