Category: 2024

Editor Anthony

We’re Expanding!

Plans are under way to expand the Anthony Museum campus! We will be building a new interpretive center at the intersection of Brown Street and Jefferson Ave, about 900 feet from our current campus.

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The new building will have a 3,000 sq ft wing dedicated to the long-term care, conservation, and research of our permanent collection of invaluable objects, with state-of-the-art security, fire suppression, and environmental controls. We will have a 6,000 sq ft exhibit area featuring engaging, immersive experiences that will share the impact and relevance of Susan B. Anthony’s life and work. In addition to flexible space for programs, receptions, and the museum shop, there will be a catering kitchen and enough bathrooms to accommodate bus tours and school groups during the busiest seasons.

For eight decades, the Anthony Museum’s impact has been constrained by the capacity of its facilities. (The Susan B. Anthony House is limited to 35 visitors at a time, by fire code.) The campus expansion will increase that capacity five-fold! This will allow the Museum to accommodate thousands more visitors. During the sunny months, those visitors will be mostly tourists who come from outside our area, bringing economic growth. During the winter months, the Anthony Museum will have to capacity to expand our outreach and programs for our local community.

We are excited to move ahead with this project that will allow us to expand our reach and impact. The property, soon to be known as 1 Jefferson Avenue, has been acquired. The site and parking and exterior building plans have been approved by the City.

We have raised $16 million of the $25 million needed for the project. Once we have raised the balance, we will be able to take the next steps to break ground.

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Editor Anthony

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! 

Editor Anthony

Get to Know Rhoda DeGarmo

Meet Rhoda DeGarmo, an ardent anti-slavery advocate, temperance worker, suffragist, friend of Anthony and Stanton, yet for many today, an unfamiliar name. What did she do for women’s rights? What would she say to us today about the importance of voting?

Born in Massachusetts in 1798 or 1799, Rhoda and her husband, Elias DeGarmo, were farmers in Gates, NY, just outside of Rochester, in the 1800s. The DeGarmos were part of the network of anti-slavery activists who made up the Underground Railroad in the region. Their home often provided refuge for enslaved persons fleeing to Canada. She was one of the first people to join the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society when it was formed in 1842. She later became part of its equivalent of an executive committee, organizing Anti-Slavery Fairs all around the region. When Daniel and Lucy Anthony moved with their family to a neighboring farm in Gates in late 1845, the families discovered they had much in common and became close friends, working together on anti-slavery, temperance, and women’s rights causes.

In June of 1848, Rhoda DeGarmo and other Quakers walked out of the Genesee Yearly Meeting of Friends when the elders objected to their anti-slavery activities. The next month, at the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, she was chosen as one of the organizers for the adjourned convention, to be held in Rochester in August. She supported the move to appoint a woman to preside over the Rochester convention, something strongly opposed by other women delegates as “a most hazardous experiment.” Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton refused to sit on the dais with a woman presiding.

Throughout her life, Rhoda DeGarmo worked with anti-slavery groups, with state and local women’s rights organizations, and  temperance organizations, earning her a respected place as a human-rights activist among her contemporaries.  She was a frequent visitor at the Anthony home in Rochester. She was a member of the Rochester Political Equality Club formed by Mary Anthony. In 1872, when Susan B. Anthony famously registered and voted in the presidential election, claiming her vote as a right of citizenship under the XIV Amendment, Rhoda DeGarmo, by then in her 70s, was right there, one of the 14 other women voting with her. Rhoda DeGarmo died in 1873, a few months after she dared to vote.

[Ed. note: In 1848, Rhoda DeGarmo’s portrait was created by artist C. Hoag, a painting that came to the Anthony Museum from a direct descendant. The portrait was conserved in 2012 with funding provided by the Greater Hudson Heritage Network and work performed by Tracy Dulniak of Great Lakes Art Conservation, LLC. This portrait is on display in Mary Anthony’s study in the Susan B. Anthony House at the Anthony Museum.]