Formed by glaciers, this cemetery has high hills and deep valleys, winding eskers and almost bottomless kettles. The whole place is a forest of trees, many of them rare and specimen. Since 1838, a third of a million people have taken permanent residence in the cemetery's 197 acres. There are mausoleums dug deep into hillsides and everywhere myriad symbols of Victorian funerary art. In stone and bronze are soaring Egyptian obelisks, miniature Greek temples (one sleeps 20 with a lot of dancing room left over), winged angels of mercy, draped urns and broken columns, Gothic towers, and sculptures of everything from Christian saints to favorite pet dogs. They all gloriously decorate more than 350,000 graves that through the sea of vertical monuments, send a mighty chorus of hope heavenward. In fall and winter, Mount Hope becomes a rookery, and the trees appear to be fully leafed with the black bodies of crows. In summer, a high 1875 Florentine fountain cascades water from lions' mouths down through three basins held up by cast-iron caryatids.
She was prohibited from speaking at a temperance rally in Albany in 1852 because of her sex. She spent the rest of her life seeking equality for women. Susan B. proposed the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Known as the Anthony Amendment, it gave voting rights to women and was finally adopted in 1920. The Historic Susan B. Anthony House is also located in Rochester.
Visit http://www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/ for details
He was an escaped slave who became the country's renowned leader of the antislavery movement. His famous abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, was published in Rochester.
Read Frederick Douglass' account of his life on-line, provided courtesy of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I--Life as a Slave, Part II--Life as a Freeman
Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The Rev. Thomas James was one of Rochester's leading citizens of African descent. A life-long worker in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, James was a principal founder of Rochester's A.M.E. Zion in the 1820's and was later engaged in extensive missionary work in other parts of the country. James was also a participant in the anti-slavery movement from its beginnings in Western New York and New England. During the Civil War, James, an ex-slave himself, assisted Union authorities in the relief of newly liberated Blacks in
Louisville, Kentucky - complicated and dangerous work in a violent border state.
Read Reverend James' own account of his life on-line, provided courtesy of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -
Life of Rev. Thomas James, an Autobiography
