WIDENING HORIZONS
Unable to recoup his business losses in Center Falls and losing even the satinet factory, Susan's father had looked about in Virginia and Michigan as well as western New York for an opportunity to make a fresh start. A farm on the outskirts of Rochester looked promising, and with the money which Lucy Anthony had inherited from Grandfather Read and which had been held for her by Uncle Joshua Read, the first payment had been made on the farm by Uncle Joshua, who held it in his name and leased it to Daniel.[21] Had it been turned over to Susan's mother, it would have become Daniel Anthony's property under the law and could have been claimed by his creditors.
Only Susan, Merritt, and Mary climbed into the stage with their parents, early in November 1845, on the first lap of their journey to their new home, near Rochester, New York. Guelma and Hannah[22] were both married and settled in homes of their own, and young Daniel, clerking in Lenox, had decided to stay behind.
After a visit with Uncle Joshua at Palatine Bridge, they boarded a line boat on the Erie Canal, taking with them their gray horse and wagon; and surrounded by their household goods, they moved slowly westward. Standing beside her father in the warm November sunshine, Susan watched the strong horses on the towpath, plodding patiently ahead, and heard the wash of the water against the prow and the noisy greeting of boat horns. As they passed the snug friendly villages along the canal and the wide fertile fields, now brown and bleak after the harvest, she wondered what the new farm would be like and what the future would bring; and at night when the lights twinkled in the settlements along the shore, she thought longingly of her old home and the sisters she had left behind.
After a journey of several days, they reached Rochester late in the afternoon. Her father took the horse and wagon off the boat, and in the chill gray dusk drove them three miles over muddy roads to the farm. It was dark when they arrived, and the house was cold, empty, and dismal, but after the fires were lighted and her mother had cooked a big kettle of cornmeal mush, their spirits revived. Within the next few days they transformed it into a cheerful comfortable home.
The house on a little hill overlooked their thirty-two acres. Back of it was the barn, a carriage house, and a little blacksmith shop.[23] Looking out over the flat snowy fields toward the curving Genesee River and the church steeples in Rochester, Susan often thought wistfully of the blue hills around Center Falls and Battenville and of the good times she had had there.
The winter was lonely for her in spite of the friendliness of their Quaker neighbors, the De Garmos, and the Quaker families in Rochester who called at once to welcome them. Her father found these neighbors very congenial and they readily interested him in the antislavery movement, now active in western New York. Within the next few months, several antislavery meetings were held in the Anthony home and opened a new world to Susan. For the first time she heard of the Underground Railroad which secretly guided fugitive slaves to Canada and of the Liberty party which was making a political issue of slavery. She listened to serious, troubled discussion of the annexation of Texas, bringing more power to the proslavery block, which even the acquisition of free Oregon could not offset. She read antislavery tracts and copies of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, borrowed from Quaker friends; and on long winter evenings, as she sat by the fire sewing, she talked over with her father the issues they raised.
When spring came and the trees and bushes leafed out, she took more interest in the farm, discovering its good points one by one—the flowering quince along the driveway, the pinks bordering the walk to the front door, the rosebushes in the yard, and cherry trees, currant and gooseberry bushes in abundance. Her father planted peach and apple orchards and worked the "sixpenny farm,"[24] as he called it, to the best of his ability, but the thirty-two acres seemed very small compared with the large Anthony and Read farms in the Berkshires, and he soon began to look about for more satisfying work. This he found a few years later with the New York Life Insurance Company, then developing its business in western New York. Very successful in this new field, he continued in it the rest of his life, but he always kept the farm for the family home.