The suffrage committee meetings were held during several days and evenings preceding the Historical Society celebration. It was a picture always to be remembered, that group of distinguished women, standing at the very head of the greatest progressive movement of the age, gathered in serious conclave in those old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms built over a century ago, concocting schemes which would have filled their Quaker owners with holy horror. It seemed almost as if they would come back from the dim past to ask what it all meant. And yet, when one recalled that the Quakers never commanded their women to keep silence in the meeting house, but recognized their full equality there and elsewhere, and stood for liberty in a world given over to religious and political tyranny, it seemed indeed most fitting that the representatives of this great association for securing freedom to all, should come together under the roof of one of these old Friends. One felt as if the ancient door-latch should lift, and Aunt Hannah, the wise and gentle Quaker preacher, should glide in and take her seat among these other women whom the Spirit also had moved. But the most remarkable feature of this unique occasion was that the woman presiding over the deliberations of this body of reformers, should have carried on her childish games in this very room, seventy-five years before, and listened with awe to parents and grandparents as they discussed the burning questions of intemperance, slavery and religious intolerance.
An unseasonable storm of several days' duration had made it necessary to transfer the meeting of the Historical Society to the pavilion in Plunkett's Park. The ladies of Adams and vicinity, with Mrs. Susan Anthony Brown at their head, had prepared a bountiful luncheon for the officers of the society and the fifty invited guests, and here, at noon on July 29, Miss Anthony sat at the upper end of the long table with Rev. Anna Shaw on one hand and Rev. A. B. Whipple on the other. At the conclusion of the luncheon, the officers and speakers took seats on the stage in the large pavilion, which soon was filled with an audience that had come from Williamstown, North Adams, Pittsfield, Great Barrington, Lee and other surrounding towns. The Adams Freeman said: "If the group of women speakers were brilliant, the audience that honored them, while less so perhaps in renown, was equal in intellectual attainments. It was a cultured assembly, including the most progressive people of Berkshire."[133]
AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD, JULY 30, 1897.
In a few words of welcome Rev. Louis Zahner, the Episcopal minister, spoke of the Anthony family as having laid the foundations of the schools, the industries and the prosperity of Adams, and of the community's indebtedness to them for the best it has today. Mr. Whipple, in a cordial address, then introduced Miss Anthony and placed the meeting in her charge. Can any pen describe her pride and happiness in returning thus to the loved home of her birth and childhood, to meet this warm and appreciative welcome and to introduce in turn her cabinet of eminent women?
After relating some very interesting recollections of her ancestors and of early events, which were especially appreciated by the old residents, she introduced Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who said in the course of a graceful address:
There is no citizen of this great nation who would not be delighted with the privilege of visiting these Berkshire hills, famed for their beauty, but it is not because of this that most of us have made this pilgrimage to Adams; rather have we come with much of that spirit which led the thousands upon thousands of Christians in the early centuries to Jerusalem, or which later prompted thousands of Mohammedans to make their pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. We have come to Adams because it is the birthplace of the greatest woman of our time.
Many centuries ago, on the 15th of February, there was born a man whose name is familiar to every school-child throughout the civilized world, and yet that man never knew a happy day. He was reviled, persecuted, martyred, tried, condemned, and died sorrowful and broken-hearted. And what was his offense? He declared that this earth turned upon its axis and that it moved around the sun. There were no newspapers in that day, but every pulpit thundered its denunciation against the great Galileo. When he was condemned to die he was compelled to renounce this belief, but under his breath he said, "The world does move!" A century after he had gone, not a pulpit in Christendom, not a scholar, was there but knew that he had told the truth.
It is a curious coincidence that upon the anniversary of the birthday of Galileo there was born Susan B. Anthony. She also perceived a great truth and the world did not agree with her. It reviled her for the belief she had propounded, but in this century she never renounced that belief, but thundered back to the pulpit and to the newspapers that the world does move and the time will come when women shall be free; the time will come when they shall have every right, every privilege, every liberty which any man enjoys.... We, today, are making the first pilgrimage to the birthplace of Susan B. Anthony, but I prophesy that in another quarter of a century there will be many pilgrimages hither, and no child will be so illiterate as not to know that in this county it was this greatest of American women was born.
Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery followed with an entertaining account of her trip abroad with Miss Anthony and the latter's utter indifference to the titles of the nobility. As she never could get them right she discarded all of them and insisted on calling everybody plain "Mr." and "Mrs." She then related this incident:
We had in our party for a few weeks a couple of English ladies. When driving in Rome, one of them, a great dame of noble lineage, was admiring an old palace belonging to some very ancient Roman family and made the statement that this same family owned five other famous palaces in Italy. Miss Anthony seemed to be making a mental calculation, and finally said with enthusiasm, "What a magnificent orphan asylum that would make."
"Why, Miss Anthony, do you mean that you would actually turn the home of this old family into an orphan asylum?"
"Yes," said she, "I think about 700 of these little ragamuffins could be put in there. Think of the streets just full of them, and all these big houses vacant! I don't see a better use to which these old palaces could be put."
Mrs. Upton in her bright, humorous way related some amusing stories which she had heard from her ancestors, who were born in Berkshire, and adroitly turned them into an argument for woman suffrage. A beautiful poem was read, entitled "Pioneers," dedicated to Miss Anthony by her old friend John M. Thayer, of Rochester. Col. D. R. Anthony created great mirth by telling among other stories that eighty years ago his father had a cotton mill of twenty-six looms; one day all of them suddenly stopped and, rushing out to ascertain the cause, he found that his wife, in rinsing her mop in the stream, had stopped the power which moved the machinery! He then referred to the Plunkett factories with 2,600 looms, and the other great mills of Adams, as illustrating the progress of the century. In an address which glowed with beauty and eloquence, Mrs. May Wright Sewall thus compared Miss Anthony's character with the scenes amidst which she was born: