The only persons ever allowed to smoke or drink intoxicants in the Anthony home were Quaker preachers. The house was half-way between Danby, Vt., and Easton, N.Y., where the Quarterly Meetings were held and the preachers and elders stopped there on their way. In a closet under the stairs were a case of clay pipes, a paper of tobacco and demijohns of excellent gin and brandy, from which the "high seat" brothers were permitted to help themselves. It is not surprising to find in the annals that a dozen or more would drop in to get one of Mrs. Anthony's good dinners and the refreshments above mentioned.
In the spring of 1832 a brick-kiln was burned in preparation for the new house. Mrs. Anthony boarded ten or twelve brick-makers and some of the factory hands, with no help but that of her daughters Guelma, Susan and Hannah, aged fourteen, twelve and ten. When the new baby came, these three little girls did all the work, cooking the food and carrying it four or five steps up from the kitchen to the mother's room to let her see if it were nicely prepared and if the dinner-pails for the men were properly packed.
Soon after this, Mr. Anthony remarked that one of the "spoolers" was ill and there was no one to do her work. Susan and Hannah had spent many hours watching the factory girls, and at once raised a clamor to take the place of the sick "spooler." The mother objected, but the father, who always encouraged his children in their independent ideas, interceded and finally they were allowed to draw straws to decide which should go, the winner to divide her wages with the loser. The lot fell to Susan, who worked faithfully every day for two weeks and received full wages, $3. Hannah, with her $1.50, bought a green bead bag, then considered the crowning glory of a girl's wardrobe. Susan purchased half a dozen pale-blue coffee cups and saucers, which she had heard her mother wish for, and presented them to her with a happy heart.
The next summer the house was built, the finest in that part of the country, a two-and-a-half-story brick with fifteen rooms and all the conveniences then known. Quakers never celebrate Christmas, but the Anthonys, having lived now for seven years in a Presbyterian neighborhood, decided to give the children a Christmas party in the new home. The walls had a beautiful hard finish, the woodwork was tinted light green and the new flag-bottomed chairs were painted black. Between the rough boots of the country youths and the chairs pushed or tipped against the wall, both woodwork and plastering were almost ruined, and the new house carried a lasting reminder of the festivities.
About this time Daniel Anthony was again brought under Quaker criticism. On one of his journeys to New York he had bought a camlet cloak with a big cape, as affording the best protection for the long, cold rides he had to take. The Friends declared this to be "out of plainness" and insisted that he leave off the cape and cease wearing a brightly colored handkerchief about his neck and ears. Daniel, who was beginning to be rather restive under these restraints, refused to comply, but, as he was a valuable member, it was finally decided here also to condone his offense.
Through all those years Lucy Anthony went to Quaker meeting with her husband. After public services were over, however, and the shutters pulled up between the men's and the women's sides of the house for business meeting, she was rigidly barred out. She would take her children and walk about in the grave-yard outside while she waited for Daniel, but, as the graves were all in a row without even a headstone to distinguish them, this was not a very interesting pastime and the wait was long and tedious. When the little girls went with the father they also were shut out of the executive session where such momentous questions were discussed as, "Are Friends careful to keep themselves and their children from attending places of diversion?" "Are Friends careful to refrain from tale-bearing and detraction?" "Are Friends careful to send their children to school, and all children in their employ?"
One cold day, the mother being detained at home, ten-year-old Susan received permission to go with her father. When the business meeting began, she curled up quietly in a corner by the stove, thinking to escape detection, but was spied out by one of the elders, a woman with green spectacles, who tip-toed down from the "high seat" and said, "Is thee a member?" "No, but my father is," replied Susan. "That will not do, thee will have to go out." "My mother told me to stay in." "Thy mother doesn't manage things here." "But my father told me to stay in." "Neither thy father nor thy mother can say what thee shall do here; thee will have to go out;" and taking the child by the arm she led her into the cold vestibule. After remaining there until almost frozen, Susan decided to go to the nearest neighbor's. When she opened the gate a big dog sprung fiercely upon her. Her screams brought out the family and she was taken into the house, where it was found the only injury was a large piece bitten out of the new Scotch plaid cloak which she had gone to meeting on purpose to exhibit. The affair created considerable excitement, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony were very indignant, and it ended in the father's making a "request" that his children be made members of the Society, which was done.
Daniel Anthony was by nature a broad, progressive man, and his family were not brought up according to the strictest and narrowest requirements of Quaker doctrine; while his wife, remembering the liberal teachings of her Universalist father and her own girlish love of youthful pastimes, went still further in making life pleasant for the children. Through her influence the daughters secured many a pretty article of wearing apparel, and, when there was a party whose hours were later than the father approved, the mother managed to have them spend the night with girls in the neighborhood.
When the family first moved to Battenville the children went to the little old-fashioned district school taught by a man in winter and a woman in summer. None of the men could teach Susan "long division" or understand why a girl should insist upon learning it. One of the women maintained discipline by means of her corset-board used as a ferule. As soon as Mr. Anthony finished the brick store he set apart one room upstairs for a private school, employed the best teachers to be had and admitted only such children as he wished to associate with his own. When the new house was built a large room was devoted to school purposes. This was the first in that neighborhood to have a separate seat for each pupil, and, although only a stool without a back, it was a vast improvement on the long bench running around the wall, the same height for big and little. The girls were taught sewing as carefully as reading and spelling, and Susan was noted for her skill with the needle. A sampler is still in existence which she made at the age of eleven, a fine specimen of needle-work with the family record surrounded by a wreath of strawberries all carefully wrought in crewels. There is also a bedquilt, the pieces sewed together with the fine "over-and-over" stitch, and there are ruffles hemmed with stitches so tiny they scarcely can be distinguished. An early teacher was a cousin, Nancy Howe,[4] who was followed by another cousin, Sarah Anthony, a graduate of Rensselaer Quaker boarding-school. Among the teachers was Mary Perkins, just graduated from Miss Grant's seminary at Ipswich, Mass., and a pupil of Mary Lyon, founder of Mt. Holyoke. She was their first fashionably educated teacher and taught them to recite poems in concert, introduced school books with pictures, little black illustrations of Old Dog Tray, Mary and Her Lamb, etc., and gave them their first idea of calisthenics. She loved music, and wished to attend the village singing-school. Lucy Anthony sympathized with this desire and interceded for her, but Daniel decided it would be setting a bad example to the children and they would be wanting to sing.[5]
Into this commodious home Lucy Anthony brought her aged father and mother, and carefully tended them until the death of both within the same year, aged eighty-four. In May, 1834, came the first great sorrow, the death of little Eliza, aged two years, and the mother was heart-broken. Her life was centered in her children, and she could not be reconciled to giving up even one. After her own death, nearly fifty years later, in her box of most sacredly guarded keepsakes, was found a little faded pink dress of the dear child's which many times had been moistened with the mother's tears.