Canajoharie Academy /West Hill School (Cliff Street)

As the headmistress of the female department, Susan B. Anthony taught from 1846-1849 in the building that stood in this spot. One cousin called her "the smartest woman in Canajoharie." Here she began her public career as a reformer, when she gave her first lecture on temperance on March 2, 1849. She resigned in 1849 to move to Rochester, where she lived with her parents and began her career in abolitionism and women's rights. The current structure was designed by Archimedes Russell and built in 1892.

During her tenure as Preceptress and teacher at the Canajoharie Academy, Susan B. Anthony wrote many letters home to her family in Rochester detailing her life in Canajoharie . One such letter to her mother in 1849 describes the new principal at school Thomas Bibb Bradley (age 19) who was a senior from Union College in nearby Schenectady. Bradley was the son of an Alabama slave owner and in Anthony ’s opinion he governed the school in the same fashion as a slave master. 

While census records indicate that a number of the local Black children attended school, it is not known at this point if any of them living in Canajoharie were among the students attending the academy.