


Two weeks after Susan B. Anthony cast her ballot in the 1872 presidential election, an audacious act of defiance and a pivotal moment in the women’s suffrage movement, a deputy federal marshal visited her home in Rochester, N.Y.
Anthony received the federal marshal in her parlor, where he explained that she was to accompany him “downtown,” according to an account of the meeting she later gave to the National Woman Suffrage Association.
“What for?” Anthony recalled asking him.
“To arrest you,” he replied.
Fast-forward 152 years to Saturday, when more than 700 voters visited the same home to cast their ballots for president, after it was designated an early polling site by the local board of elections.
The home, on Madison Street in the city’s aptly named Susan B. Anthony neighborhood, long ago became a museum and a National Historic Landmark. But this year marks its first as a polling place.
“It’s just so cool to be able to vote at the place where Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting,” said Rebecca McGinnis, 37, who held her 1-year-old daughter, Clara, as they stood in line with dozens of voters.
“It’s very full circle,” she added. “I think about my great-grandmother coming here and not being able to vote at all, and now her great-great-granddaughter is standing in the place where Susan B. Anthony fought for women’s rights.”