ion aroused her curiosity.
Among her father's Quaker friends in Rochester, she had heard only
praise of Mrs. Mott, and she herself, when a pupil at Deborah
Moulson's seminary, had been inspired by Mrs. Mott's remarks at
Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia.

So far Susan had encountered few barriers because she was a woman. She
had had little personal contact with the hardships other women
suffered because of their inferior legal status. To be sure, it had
been puzzling to her as child that Sally Hyatt, the most skillful
weaver in her father's mill, had never been made overseer, but the
fact that her mother had not the legal right to hold property in her
own name did not at the time make an impression upon her. Brought up
as a Quaker, she had no obstacles put in the way of her education. She
had an exceptional father who was proud of his daughters' intelligence
and ability and respected their opinions and decisions. Her only real
complaint was the low salary she had been obliged to accept as a
teacher because she was a woman. She sensed a feeling of male
superiority, which she resented, in her brother-in-law, Aaron McLean,
who did not approve of women preachers and who thought it more
important for a woman to bake biscuits than to study algebra. She met
the same arrogance of sex in her Cousin Margaret's husband, but she
had not analyzed the cause, or seen the need of concerted action by
women.

Returning home for her vacation in August, she found to her surprise
that a second woman's rights convention had been held in Rochester in
the Unitarian church, that her mother, her father, and her sister
Mary, and many of their Quaker friends had not only attended, but had
signed the Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions, and that her
cousin, Sarah Burtis Anthony, had acted as secretary. Her father
showed so much interest, as he told her about the meetings, that she
laughingly remarked, "I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the
times."[29] She countered Mary's ardent defense of the convention with
good-natured ridicule. The whole family, however, continued to be so
enthusiastic over the meetings and this new movement for woman's
rights, they talked so much about Elizabeth Cady Stanton "with her
black curls and ruddy cheeks"[30] and about Lucretia Mott "with her
Quaker cap and her crossed handkerchief of the finest muslin," both
"speaking so grandly and looking magnificent," that Susan's interest
was finally arouse