Mary Stafford Anthony was born on April 2, 1827, to Daniel and Lucy Read Anthony, in Battenville (Washington County), New York. Her father was a liberal Quaker (Society of Friends) abolitionist, and although her mother had been raised a Baptist, the Anthony family were raised as Quakers. Anthony had three sisters and two brothers. One of her older sisters was Susan B. Anthony. In addition to her teaching and caregiving roles, Anthony also proved willing to come to the aid of her older sister Susan. In 1870, when Susan’s journal The Revolution was in financial straits, Anthony not only loaned her sister money to help save the journal; she also spent a sweltering New York City summer working in the journal’s office, while Susan traveled to raise money and attract subscribers. Susan often expressed appreciation that her younger sister generally assumed the responsibility of caring for ill and dependent family members, thereby allowing Susan to devote her energies to women’s rights activities. The Anthony sisters’ respect and appreciation was mutual, however, and their relationship symbiotic. As a teacher, Anthony applauded her older sister’s work on behalf of women’s rights. Although Anthony was to remain in the shadow of her famous older sister, she was a suffrage activist in her own right. Her interest in women’s rights, in fact, preceded that of her sister. On August 2, 1848, she attended the Adjourned Convention in Rochester of the First Woman’s Rights Convention and, together with her father and mother, signed the Declaration of Sentiments. In November of 1872, she was one of the women who, along with her sister Susan, voted in the presidential election. Anthony again attempted to register to vote in 1873, this time unsuccessfully. In 1878, she acted as a Monroe County delegate when the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) held its convention in Rochester, New York, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the first woman’s rights convention. Anthony stepped up her women’s rights activities in the mid-1880s. She was instrumental in establishing the Women’s Political Club (later renamed the Political Equality Club). It was at her home that a number of interested women gathered in December of 1885; by March of 1886, the organization was fully formed and a president had been elected. Anthony herself was to assume the presidency of the organization in 1892. She served in this capacity for the next eleven years Anthony was to prove an activist president of the Political Equality Club (PEC). During her first year in office, the Club organized a drive to convince the City Council to include a women’s suffrage clause in the City’s new charter. The Club obtained a set of enrollment books and embarked upon a survey of the city in order to provide numbers to influential groups on how many residents favored woman suffrage. Although a partial survey was completed with impressive results, the City declined to seriously consider the suffrage clause. In 1891, Anthony’s sister Susan decided to settle permanently in Rochester, and the Political Equality Club (PEC) helped prepare the Anthony home for the Susan’s return. From then on, Anthony’s housekeeping chores were inextricably interwoven with women’s rights activism, and guests — long term and short term — streamed through constantly. n 1893, Mary Anthony was elected corresponding secretary for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (NYSWSA). That same year, the state’s suffragists decided to mount an all-out campaign to obtain the vote for New York’s women. The Anthony home became a campaign headquarters. Anthony herself was in the midst of this activity, working “day and night from December, 1893, to July, 1894, sending out thousands of letters, petition blanks, leaflets, suffrage papers….” In addition to these unpaid duties (she declined a salary), Anthony also took charge of the local canvass of the city in her capacity as President of the PEC. Her results in this effort were lauded as among the best in the State. On top of these duties for the sake of the suffrage cause, Anthony became increasingly indispensable to Susan’s daily life. She shopped for her famous sister, kept the house, did her errands, and helped her pack for her innumerable trips. Anthony generally preferred to remain in the background, yet her tireless devotion to her sister and to the cause of women’s rights was recognized on the occasion of her seventieth birthday, in 1897. There was a large celebration in her honor, impressive enough to be reported in the Democrat and Chronicle, the local newspaper. Speakers at the occasion included Jean Brooks Greenleaf and Rev. William C. Gannett. Among the gifts received were a purse containing $70 and a diamond pin. Anthony, a homeowner and taxpayer, believed that women should not have to support a government that did not allow them representation. While she paid her taxes, she wanted it recorded that they were “Paid under protest.” During the year 1897 Anthony began to make written “Protests.” In one of the Protests, dated 1901, Anthony stated that while she was paying her taxes, she believed “…that taxation without representation is just as great ‘tyranny’ today…as it was in 1776….” Her last Protest, written in 1907 (the year of her death) stated in part that she “still” protested “against helping to support a Government manifestly so unjust to one-half of its people.” In 1900, Anthony again proved herself both a reliable sister and worker for the cause of women’s rights, when she gave $2,000 to the University of Rochester, thereby helping to allow it to open its doors to women. Her sister, desperately seeking funds to meet the University’s deadline, had persuaded Anthony to give what she had intended to bequeath to the university should it become co-educational. Susan B. Anthony had urged her sister, “Give it now….Don’t wait or the girls may never be admitted….” Anthony’s suffrage work extended through her seventies and up until her death. In 1905 she traveled to Portland, Oregon with her sister to attend the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention. There, at an evening session, she read the Declaration of Sentiments, which she had signed back in 1848. The same year, the sisters held an open house in their home for delegates to the NYSWSA Convention, held in Rochester (NY). In 1906, she accompanied her sister Susan B. Anthony to Baltimore for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention, held just over a month before her older sister died. An ailing Anthony traveled to Oregon shortly after Susan’s death — at Susan’s request — to help in that state’s campaign for a women’s suffrage amendment. In October of 1906, Anthony attended her last suffrage convention, the NYSWSA meeting held in Syracuse, New York. On her deathbed she composed her final message to the NAWSA Convention, which was held in Chicago on February 14, 1907. She died at her home on February 7, 1907. Her funeral service was held at the Unitarian Church. She was buried next to her sister at Mount Hope Cemetery. The platinum / palladium process was invented in the first half of the 19th century but a reliable commercial process was not introduced until the 1880's. It was popular for practical reasons as platinum is very stable so prints do not deteriorate over time. It is a very permanent image, and was highly valued for this reason. The main attraction of platinotype is, however, aesthetic. The process produces wonderfully rich grey-tones and a matte finish due to the print being laid directly on paper without the need for an emulsion. Those characteristics are demonstrated in this wonderful photograph. 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