Susan B. Anthony home in Greenwich to be auctioned Thursday morning
Several local activists have been trying to form a nonprofit organization to purchase the home and convert it into a museum for women's suffrage.
Helise Flickstein, of Athol, contacted the county Board of Supervisors in September to request help and has since been working with the county attorney, Roger Wickes, to file for nonprofit status.
Connecticut resident Coline Jenkins, the great-great granddaughter of another suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, said she would donate pictures and reproductions of period memorabilia for the museum.
The home has been for sale since July, when it was posted for $219,000. Since then, owner Michael Ramos, of San Diego, Calif., was unable to pay the mortgage on the property. He had moved across the country and had poured his life savings into restoring the home.
As a young girl, Anthony worked in the nearby mill and saw how female workers had to give up their income to their husbands or fathers, said Cathy Barber, a former Greenwich historian.
Anthony and her sister, Guelma, taught classes at the home site, said Loretta Bates of the Washington County historian’s office. However, the wing Anthony used as a schoolhouse was removed during the 1970s or 1980s, and a modern kitchen and bathrooms were added.
The home still has much of the original floor plan on the first floor, the original staircase, interior woodwork, front stoop, gables and adjoining carriage house.
A space in the home is believed to be a possible hiding space used on the Underground Railroad. Between two sitting rooms, a wide entryway has two wide doors on either side, and a crawl space above the doorway believed to have been used to hide blacks escaping slavery.