In her diary, speaking of an aunt who sympathizes with them and says it will be hard to give up going with the people they have been accustomed to, Susan observes, "I do not think that losing our property will cause us ever to mingle with low company." She is now somewhat uncertain about taking up teaching permanently, fearing she will "lose the habit of using the plain language;" but May 22, 1838, she writes at Union Village, now Greenwich:
On last evening, which was First day, I again left my home to mingle with strangers, which seems to be my sad lot. Separation was rendered more trying on account of the embarrassing condition of our business affairs. I found my school small and quite disorderly. O, may my patience hold out to persevere without intermission.
In the summer of 1838 the factory, store, home and much of the furniture had to be given up to the creditors. Not an article was spared from the inventory. All the mother's wedding presents, the furniture and the silver spoons given her by her parents, the wearing apparel of the family, even the flour, tea, coffee and sugar, the children's school books, the Bible and the dictionary, were carefully noted. On this list, still in existence, are "underclothes of wife and daughters," "spectacles of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony," "pocket-knives of boys," "scraps of old iron"--and the law took all except the bare necessities. In this hour of extremity the guardian angel appeared in the person of Joshua Read, a brother of Mrs. Anthony, from Palatine Bridge, N.Y., who bid in all which the family desired to keep and restored to them their possessions, making himself their lenient creditor.
The winter of 1839 Susan attended the home school, taught by Daniel Wright, a fine scholar and remarkably successful teacher. This ended her school days, and in her journal she says: "I probably shall never go to school again, and all the advancement which I hereafter make must be by my own exertions."
In March, 1839, the family moved to Hardscrabble, a small village two miles further down the Battenkill. They went on a cold, blustering day, and one may imagine the feelings of Daniel and Lucy Anthony and their older children as they turned away from their big factory, their handsome home and the friends they had learned to love. Mrs. Anthony's heart was overflowing with sorrow, for in less than five years she had lost by death her little daughter, her father and mother, and now was swept away her home hallowed by their beloved memories.