It was a legendary suffragette’s home. This year it’s a voting site.

Kate Scholer was already excited to cast her first vote for a woman presidential nominee when her mom gave her the good news: She can do it at Susan B. Anthony’s house.

Located in Rochester, New York, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House honors the woman widely credited with paving the way for women to vote. This year marks the first time the center is an early voting location for residents of Monroe County.

“Everyone’s so happy to vote and have that privilege, especially to vote early, at such an important place,” said Scholer, 24.

The new polling site expands the popular tradition of voters placing their “I Voted” stickers on Anthony’s tombstone in the nearby Mount Hope Cemetery. For many, especially as Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns to be the nation’s first female president, the ability to cast their vote in Anthony’s home and then continue the pilgrimage to her gravesite highlights the sacredness of the vote.

Massive crowds of voters have flocked to the house to cast their ballot early, said Deborah L. Hughes, the president and CEO of the museum.

“We had hoped to be busy, but Saturday was kind of overwhelming,” said Hughes, who said the center had long sought to be a polling site.

Despite the crisp 40-degree weather, the energy was high outside the museum Saturday as sorority members, church groups, and even people sporting 19th century costume mingled convivially on a two-hour queue to cast their vote on the first day of early voting, Hughes said. As people exited the museum’s carriage house, where the voting was taking place, the crowd cheered.

Anthony is best known for fighting for women’s right to vote. Though she died in 1906 and didn’t live to see it, her work is largely credited with the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which bans denying the right to vote “on account of sex.”

Anthony’s legacy is ever-present for the Rochester area. Her home and the connected museum are a common field trip destination for schoolchildren, and residents commonly go for walks in Mount Hope Cemetery, which also hosts the gravesite of Frederick Douglass.

After seeing a post of Anthony’s sticker-laden gravesite on the City of Rochester’s Instagram page in 2020, Scholer knew she wanted to place an “I Voted” sticker on Anthony’s tombstone after she cast her ballot in 2024.

“I especially wanted to do it this year, voting for a woman and being able to vote with my mom,” she said.

The tradition of putting “I Voted” stickers on Anthony and her sister Mary’s tombstones exploded in popularity during the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee, said Dennis Carr, the vice president of the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery.

That year, the gravesite received more than 10,000 visitors and the tombstone equally as many stickers, he said. This year, he expects up to 15,000 visitors – though they will be placing their stickers on a special clear shield to protect the tombstones from degradation.

For Scholer, voting at Anthony’s home – where Anthony headquartered the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association – before visiting her gravesite made her first time voting for a woman monumental.

“I just thought it was really great to be a woman and be able to go and pay respect to one of the many women who helped make it possible for us to even be voting in an election, let alone be voting for women,” said Scholer.

For Scholer’s mom Lori Scholer, who voted for Clinton in 2016, the moment was significant in a different way.

“I was very optimistic in 2016, and I was, like many, extraordinarily disappointed that night,” she said. “I’m far more nervous this time.”

Anthony is most closely associated with women’s suffrage but has become a totemic figure for multiple movements, said Lisa Tetrault, an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University.

“The mythology in some ways isn’t really rooted in an understanding of Susan B. Anthony,” Tetrault said. “It’s rooted in trying to use her as an emblem for whatever cause you know a person may have.”

On the left, progressives have sought to use Anthony as a figure for women’s rights, even though “that version of Anthony has often tended to be a very whitewashed one,” Tetrault said.

On the right, some conservatives have cited an 1860s newspaper column to support the claim that Anthony was antiabortion, even though historians say there’s little reason to believe Anthony wrote it.

Still, her legacy remains salient for voters.

“Living in this political moment, one can’t help but appreciate the power and the import of voting,” said Tetrault. “It’s really nice to have a place to express that. It’s really nice to have a place where you feel community. It’s really nice to have a place where you feel this is part of something bigger than you.”

For residents of Rochester, the significance of Anthony’s legacy goes beyond party or gender lines.

Hughes recalled the peacefulness of the line to place stickers in 2016, despite the long wait.

“What was amazing to me was no one was pushy,” she said. “Some people would take 10 selfies, and no one was anxious about that.”

This year, Hughes said, many voters were emotional as they cast their vote. One poll worker even told her, ” ‘I’m assuming you and I don’t vote the same way, but it doesn’t mean any less to me to be here for this election.’ “

Carr noted that while most of the people visiting the gravesite cast their vote for Harris, there was likely a significant percentage who voted for Trump.

“I think (people) may come in with one attitude, but I think they go out feeling gratitude and respect for this woman who worked so hard to give women and others the right to vote,” the cemetery trustee said. “They go away more celebrating the ability to vote and the democracy we live in, more so than whoever candidate they support.”