The Queerest Places

Moylan, Pa.

Anna Howard Shaw home
240 Ridley Creek Road (private)

This picturesque stone house with blue trim, now a private residence, was built in 1908 by suffragist Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919), who lived here with her intimate companion, Lucy Anthony, niece of Susan B. The house was “a realization of a desire…No one could ask for a more ideal site for a cottage,” Shaw wrote in her autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, in which she noted a nearby stream and forest, and the hilltop view. Shaw was a brilliant orator who traveled extensively on behalf of the suffrage movement. “From every country I have visited I have brought back a tiny tree,” she noted, and the pine grove she started planting at her home is now full grown.

While she lived here, Shaw, a minister by profession, was president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association. Her early activism focused on temperance, but she was lured to the suffrage movement by Susan B. herself. It is estimated that Shaw gave about 10,000 speeches on suffrage during her career, mesmerizing her audiences with her powerful voice, dramatic delivery, and sharp with. She died here in Moylan, a year before the 19th Amendment passed, giving women the right to vote. The New York Times reported that “her secretary, Miss Lucy E. Anthony, a niece of Susan B. Anthony, who has been with Dr. Shaw for thirty years, … [was] at her bedside when she died.”

Q: Why does the Scripture say there shall be no marriages in heaven?
A: Ah, my dear friends [drawing a long sigh], someone has answered that by saying, because there will be no men there.

–Anna Howard Shaw, during a Q&A after one of her speeches