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.

* * * * *

The first member of the family to leave the Rochester farm was Susan.
The cherry trees were in bloom when she received an offer from
Canajoharie Academy to teach the female department. As Canajoharie was
across the river from Uncle Joshua Read's home in Palatine Bridge and
he was a trustee of the academy, she read between the lines his kindly
interest in her. He was an influential citizen of that community, a
bank director and part owner of the Albany-Utica turnpike and the
stage line to Schenectady. Accepting the offer at once, she made the
long journey by canal boat to Canajoharie, and early in May 1846 was
comfortably settled in the home of Uncle Joshua's