She was not at the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention

Anthony was a schoolteacher in Canajoharie, in the Mohawk Valley, at the time of the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton recalled in her memoir "History of Woman Suffrage." According to Stanton, Anthony was "startled and amused" when she learned about the events and "laughed heartily at the novelty and arrogance of the demand." After the Seneca Falls meeting, the Anthony family started attending services at the First Unitarian Church in Rochester where a woman's rights meeting was held. Susan lived there for many years as an adult with Anthony's sister Mary. They put their signatures on a copy of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments there. Susan didn't attend and wasn't there.

It took Anthony till she was in her 30s before she went to her first conference for women's rights. Before that, she participated actively in the temperance movement, which pushed for stricter alcohol regulations and warned against binge drinking. When she was refused permission to speak at a Sons of Temperance convention a few years after giving her first public speech, she and Stanton decided to found their own Women's State Temperance Society. They started a petition to convince the state legislature to restrict the sale of alcohol, but it was withdrawn because the majority of signers were women and children. Around this time, Anthony and Stanton began to realize that until women were granted the ability to vote, they would never be taken seriously.