How Susan B. Anthony's Vote Reached a Canandaigua Courtroom

On November 1, 1872, Susan B. Anthony and other women registered to vote in Rochester's Eighth Ward. Four days later, Anthony cast a ballot at the polling place at 81 West Avenue. At the preliminary examination that followed, election inspector Edwin P. Marsh testified that he saw her vote.

The examination record makes the episode larger than a single famous name. Its testimony describes fifteen women voting and identifies the election inspectors who registered them and accepted their ballots. Anthony also testified that she had sought legal advice from Henry R. Selden before voting.

Federal records identify an indictment dated January 24, 1873. The case then reached the federal circuit court in Canandaigua, where the trial opened on June 17. Justice Ward Hunt directed the jury to return a guilty verdict rather than submit Anthony's intent to the jury.

Anthony was sentenced to a $100 fine and the costs of the prosecution. In a letter printed in an 1874 House Judiciary Committee report, United States Attorney Richard Crowley itemized another $104.41 in taxed costs. He reported that an execution had been issued in July 1873, that the marshal returned it nulla bona—indicating no property had been found to satisfy it—and that nothing had been collected.

The surviving records also show why the case should not be reduced to one tidy legal verdict about the proceeding itself. Congressional committee reports and the suffrage movement's published account preserved competing views of the directed verdict and the request to remit the fine. Those positions are part of the history; they are not interchangeable with a neutral court transcript.

What the evidence securely connects is a chain of places and records: a ward polling place in Rochester, a preliminary examination, a federal indictment, a Canandaigua courtroom, an uncollected fine, and a later argument in Congress.

Source note

The voting and registration details come from the National Archives' Exhibit B, transcript of the preliminary examination, NARA identifier 278300, especially transcript pages 1–12. The National Archives' case-file teaching page identifies the indictment, Exhibit B, and record of conviction as Record Group 21 items 278295, 278300, and 278304.

The Canandaigua chronology and directed-verdict procedure are cross-checked against Ann D. Gordon's Federal Judicial Center study, The Trial of Susan B. Anthony, printed pages 1–13. The fine, costs, attempted collection, and institutional disagreement are recorded in House Report 648, 43rd Congress, 1st session, especially printed pages 1 and 4, and Senate Report 472, printed pages 1–16. The reports preserve institutional arguments and are identified as such rather than treated as neutral adjudications.