Days Four and Five

We arrived home late last night. On day four we found the Sonnenberg Mansion in Canandaigua. This was a slightly different experience than the Church history sights, but wonderful. The Victorian mansion was the 41 room summer home of Mary Thompson whose husband founded what is now known as Citibank. The mansion was built in 1885-87 and was stunning. The house includes 52 acres of imaginative and delightful gardens. My favorite was the Japanese garden that had a Japanese Tea House with bridges and ponds and paths adorning it. My second favorite was the rock garden that consisted of a rock lined maze cut six feet down into the ground that twisted and turned and led into a few nooks. Everything was so magical and beautiful.

That night we attended the pageant again. It is amazing how much you miss if you only go once. There is too much to see! The first night the weather was quite cold, but the second night with jackets and blankets we were comfortable.
Yesterday morning we took Mother to Rochester because her plane left two hours before ours and then we did the “Turn left here. Oh, this looks like a good street. Maybe we should turn here. Go right now. . .” thing trying to find someplace to eat. Suddenly there was a sign telling us that the Susan B. Anthony home was on the next block. So we stopped and went through it. She is one of my heroes and I enjoyed seeing where she lived and the room in which she was arrested for voting. Especially fun was seeing the black silk dress displayed in her bedroom. Women in Utah who raised silk worms made the silk brocade fabric and gave it to Anthony as a gift for her 80th birthday and to thank her for her work to give women the right to vote. Anthony then had it made into this dress. I can’t remember for sure, but I think they said she wore the dress to Utah when she was on a lecture tour.

I am so grateful she hung in there despite all the persecution she encountered. So many rights that women enjoy today are because of Susan B. Anthony. I’ve always thought it interesting that she was born about 50 miles away from the spot of Joseph Smith’s first vision and just two months before it. The Lord send a lot of blessings in 1820!