Stanton's Grassmere

When the Stanton family moved to Seneca Falls in 1847, their house was nearly twice as large as it is now but was dilapidated and overgrown. Acting as her own general contractor, Elizabeth Cady Stanton hired workers and oversaw its refurbishment, and the family named it Grassmere after poet William Wordsworth’s English home, a landscape that inspired some of his poetic dreams. Stanton often managed the household and her family alone while her husband, Henry, served in the New York State legislature and, as a lawyer and reformer, agitated for the abolition of slavery. Stanton’s father, Daniel Cady, gave the house to his daughter, and under the Married Women’s Property Act of 1848, which allowed women to retain property received as a gift or inheritance, she owned it in her own name. She sold the property in 1862 when the family moved to New York City.

Seneca Falls, New York · United States