Anthony Birthplace Museum Hosts Tea Party, Poetry Reading

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ADAMS, Mass. — The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum will hold an afternoon tea featuring poetry readings by Nancy Manning and Karen Ciosek. 
 
The event will take place outside on Sunday, Aug. 4, at 3 p.m. with tea, sandwiches, baked goods by Shire Cottage Bakery, and cake. Table settings are being donated by Mary Whitman, flowers by Full Well Farm, and napkins provided by Annie Selkie Outlet. 
 
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children. Members of the museum attend for free. In the event of rain the poetry reading will continue indoors, and the tea will be postponed. 
 
How does this relate to suffragist Susan B. Anthony?
 
One could say that women's suffrage started with a tea party. On July 9, 1848, Jane Hunt invited Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock and Mary Wright to her house for tea. During their conversation, they struck upon an idea: a convention for women's rights. Just 10 days later, they held the Seneca Falls (N.Y.) Convention, drafting an organizing document, the Declaration of Sentiments. 
 
 Anthony was not at the Seneca Falls Convention, but met Stanton later through a mutual friend, Amelia Bloomer. She and Stanton's friendship, immortalized in their plaster cast handshake currently on display in the museum, was the lifeline of the early women's suffrage movement. 
 
Tea continued to play a role, with women's groups in California packaging and selling tea to raise funds. Ava Belmont held tea parties for up to 100 in her back yard, featuring "Votes for Women" tableware. Later, the National American Women's Suffrage Association sold "Votes for Women" teacups as another fundraiser. 
 

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Treasurer's Office Staffing Debate Causes Kerfuffle in Cheshire

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
CHESHIRE, Mass. — The Selectmen tabled a discussion on Tuesday about how to structure the treasurer and collector position after the debate nearly resulted in a board member's resignation.
 
The board was determining whether to approve increasing an executive assistant's hours to full time so she can be cross-trained in the collector's office. 
 
The treasurer/collector abruptly retired more than two weeks ago and the town hired an interim part-time treasurer; the current treasurer's assistant was elected town clerk last year and has been covering multiple duties. She will step away from the treasurer's office at the end of the fiscal year. 
 
The town needs to devise a short-term solution to fill the gap and cover cases of sickness and vacations, and determine the structure of treasurer/collector's office in the long term. 
 
"I think [cross training is] really important across the board, in the collector's office, in anticipation of the assistant treasurer collector not taking the position again July 1," Town Administrator Jennifer Morse said. "We would have somebody in the office who knew what they were doing and then that would allow us to create the job descriptions we need to create and to see what town meeting wants to do with the positions." 
 
One solution is to increase the executive assistant position to full-time hours because she is already working 19 hours. 
 
But that triggers all the benefits, including health insurance, Selectman Ronald DeAngelis said. 
 
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