Mary Stafford Anthony (April 2, 1827 – February 5, 1907) was an American suffragist during the women's rights movement of the 19th century.

[2] The family worked together to keep up their spirits, for instance, after first moving to their farmhouse with their parents near Rochester.,[3] The Anthony family followed the Quaker traditions, where "men and women were partners in church and at home, hard physical work was respected, help for the needy and unfortunate was spontaneous, and education was important for both boys and girls".

She tackled projects fiercely and measured her success by learning to understand the deficiencies that blocked women from achieving their highest potential—attaining suffrage.

[citation needed] In 1844, at the age of seventeen, Anthony started working as a teacher, receiving a salary of $1.50 per week.

[citation needed] She taught for one year until her family moved to a small farm in Gates, New York, near Rochester.

[8] Although Mary Anthony was indicted,[9][10] she was allowed to provide a recognizance (promise to the court) to refrain from such illegal action in the future.

The temperance union gained more than 200,000 members in the 1880s, built a national grassroots organization, and established local alliances with state politicians.

It also came to support women's suffrage and effectively used its existing network to create political pressure on legislators.

"A herculean task was undertaken in 1893-a canvass of the city for suffrage petitions to the state constitutional convention then about to meet at Albany".

[14] Anthony accumulated more in number of petitions from women and men than votes by almost twenty five percent, a record not matched elsewhere in the state.

[1] On June 3, 1904, at the Second Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance at the Hotel Prinz Albrecht in Berlin, Germany, Miss Mary S. Anthony was unanimously approved as the second member of the newly named organization.

[17] Anthony believed that her own sacrifices for women's suffrage were natural in practice, but always risked being seen as failing by men.

She believed that women should not have to support a government that did not allow them representation; she wrote this message directly on her checks to pay taxes.

She said, "A minor may live to become of age, the illiterate to be educated, the lunatic to regain his reason, the idiot to become intelligent--when each and all can help to decide what shall enforce them; but the women, never".