usan's mother, Lucy
Read Anthony, although she had three small daughters to care for,
Guelma, Susan, and Hannah, boarded eleven of the millworkers with
only the help of a thirteen-year-old girl who worked for her after
school hours. Lucy Anthony cooked their meals on the hearth of the big
kitchen fireplace, and in the large brick oven beside it baked crisp
brown loaves of bread. In addition, washing, ironing, mending, and
spinning filled her days. But she was capable and strong and was doing
only what all women in this new country were expected to do. She
taught her young daughters to help her, and Susan, even before she was
six, was very useful; by the time she was ten she could cook a good
meal and pack a dinner pail.

[Illustration: Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony]

* * * * *

Hard work and skill were respected as Susan grew up in the rapidly
expanding young republic which less than fifty years before had been
founded and fought for. Settlers, steadily pushing westward, had built
new states out of the wilderness, adding ten to the original thirteen.
Everywhere the leaven of democracy was working and men were putting
into practice many of the principles so boldly stated in the
Declaration of Independence, claiming for themselves equal rights and
opportunities. The new states entered the Union with none of the
traditional property and religious limitations on the franchise, but
with manhood suffrage and all voters eligible for office. The older
states soon fell into line, Massachusetts in 1820 removing property
qualifications for voters. Before long, throughout the United States,
all free white men were enfranchised, leaving only women, Negroes, and
Indians without the full rights of citizenship.

[Illustration: Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony]

Although women freeholders had voted in some of the colonies and in
New Jersey as late as 1807,[2] just as in England in the fifteenth
franchise had gradually found its way into the statutes, and women's
rights as citizens were ignored, in spite of the contribution they had
made to the defense and development of the new nation. However,
European travelers, among them De Tocqueville, recognized that the
survival of the New World experiment in government and the prosperity
and strength of the people were due in large measure to the
superiority of American women. A few women had urged their claims:
Abigail Adams asked h