"When Anthony Met Stanton"

This statue and historical marker commemorate the historic 1851 meeting between women's rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were introduced to each other by fellow activist Amelia Bloomer. Susan and Elizabeth are depicted at the moment they shook hands for the first time, with Amelia looking on. On the ground next to the statue is the historical marker, which provides information about the meeting.

On May 12, 1851, the three women attended an antislavery lecture by William Lloyd Garrison in Seneca Falls. After the meeting Bloomer and Anthony meet Stanton in the street, and Bloomer introduced the two women. Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Stanton are portrayed in the reform style of dress, named “Bloomers” after Amelia Bloomer, featuring trousers under a shortened skirt. Just a few weeks before this May 1851 meeting Bloomer and Stanton had worn the new style publicly in Seneca Falls. The artist also portrayed Stanton holding a book to represent her as the intellectual force behind the early women’s movement. 

In her autobiography, Elizabeth Cady Stanton remembered her first meeting with Susan B. Anthony: "At this stage of her development I met my future friend and coadjutor for the first time. How well I remember the day! George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison having announced an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls, Miss Anthony came to attend it. These gentlemen were my guests. Walking home, after the adjournment, we met Mrs. Bloomer and Miss Anthony on the corner of the street, waiting to greet us. There she stood, with her good, earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray delaine, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly, and why I did not at once invite her home with me to dinner, I do not know. She accuses me of that neglect, and has never forgiven me, as she wished to see and hear all she could of our noble friends. I suppose my mind was full of what I had heard, or my coming dinner, or the probable behavior of three mischievous boys who had been busily exploring the premises while I was at the meeting.”

The meeting began a long friendship and partnership between Elizabeth and Susan, both of whom became leading social and women's rights activists during the 19th century. Among the many causes they supported, women's right to vote was the one they championed the most. Although they did not live to see this dream come to fruition, they, along with fellow activist Lucretia Mott, laid the foundation on which women's rights movement ultimately achieved its goal in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

The Anthony-Stanton-Bloomer statue was done by professor and sculptor Ted Aub and was dedicated on July 18, 1998, the 150^th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. The location along Van Cleef Lake is along the route visitors take between the Women’s Rights National Historical Park and the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House. 

“Anthony-Stanton-Bloomer Statue.” Freethought Trail. Accessed July 2, 2021. https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:anthony-stanton-bloomer-statue/.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897. New York: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898. Accessed July 2, 2021. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/stanton/years/years.html#X.

"When Anthony Met Stanton." The Historical Marker Database. Accessed February 2, 2019. https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=65248.

“When Anthony Met Stanton Statue.” Wander Women Project. Accessed July 2, 2021. https://wanderwomenproject.com/places/when-anthony-met-stanton-statue/.