ADAMS, Mass. — There was supposed to be fanfare and celebration, speeches and parades.
But then came COVID-19.
The town of Adams was set to commemorate native daughter Susan B. Anthony and the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment securing women's right to vote. The yearlong observance began in February with the serenading of Anthony on her 200th birthday.
The Adams Suffrage Centennial Celebration Committee had been working for more than two years to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote along with Anthony's bicentennial. The celebration was going to culminate in August with a weekend's worth of activities including live music, a food truck festival, fireworks and a parade all leading up to the unveiling and dedication on the town common of a statue of the Adams born suffragette made by world-renowned sculptor Brian Hanlon.
Hanlon's bronze was being put into place on Tuesday morning at the Town Common, which is also undergoing an update that was to be completed more than a month ago. The delays caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic pushed it to later in the year but most of the most of the work is expected to be completed before winter.
The new common at the south end of Park Street is getting new pathways, a new gazebo in the eastern corner and a small plaza featuring the Susan B. Anthony memorial.
The monument is made up of three pieces — a stepped granite base, the adult Anthony orating (she crisscrossed the nation during her adulthood giving 75 to 100 speeches a year on the subject of suffrage), and Anthony as a child sitting on the lower steps of the base.
The civil rights activist was born on East Road and lived there until her family moved when she was 6. She died in 1906, 14 years before the final passage of what is often called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. She frequently returned to Adams to visit relatives whose descendants still live in the area. Her birthplace is now a museum.
