In his prosperous days Daniel Anthony had built a satinet factory and a grist-mill at Hardscrabble and, although these were mortgaged heavily, he hoped to weather the financial storm and through them to build up again his fallen fortunes. The family were soon comfortably established in a large house which had been a hotel or tavern in the days when lumber was cut in the Green mountains and floated down the river, an immense building, sixty feet square, with wide hall and broad piazza. They did not keep a hotel, but people were in the habit of stopping here, as it was a half-way house to Troy, and they found themselves obliged to entertain a number of travelers.
Those were busy days for the family. Susan's journal contains many entries such as, "Did a large washing to-day.... Spent to-day at the spinning-wheel.... Baked 21 loaves of bread.... Wove three yards of carpet yesterday.... Got my quilt out of the frame last 5th day.... The new saw-mill has just been raised; we had 20 men to supper on 6th day, and 12 on 7th day." But there were quilting-bees and apple-parings and sleighing parties and many good times, for the elastic temperament of youth rallies quickly from grief and misfortune. Susan went to Presbyterian church one Sunday, and the gray-robed Quaker thus writes:
To see them partake of the Lord's supper, as they call it, was indeed a solemn sight, but the dress of the communicants bespeaks nothing but vanity of heart--curls, bows and artificials displayed in profusion about most of them. They say they can dress in the fashion without fixing their hearts on their costume, but surely if their hearts were not vain and worldly, their dress would not be.
The attic in this old house was finished off for a ball-room; it was said that great numbers of junk bottles had been laid under the floor to give especially nice tone to the fiddles. The young people of the village came to Daniel Anthony for permission to hold their dancing-school here but, with true Quaker spirit, he refused. Finally the committee came again and said: "You have taught us that we must not drink or go about places where liquor is sold. The only other dancing-hall in town is in a disreputable tavern, and if we can not come here we shall be obliged to go there." So Mr. Anthony called a council of his wife and elder daughters. The mother, remembering her own youth and also having a tender solicitude for the moral welfare of the young people, advised that they should have the hall. Mr. Anthony at last agreed on condition that his own daughters should not dance. So they came, and Susan, Guelma and Hannah sat against the wall and watched, longing to join them but never doing it. They danced every two weeks all winter; Mrs. Anthony gave them some simple refreshments, they went home early, there was no drinking and all was orderly and pleasant.