Stanton's "Magnificent Dwelling"
Home of Two Miami University Presidents
Built by "Old Miami" University President Robert L. Stanton, D.D. (1810-1885) as his private home and president's office, Stanton's 1868 Italianate house faced University Square, and welcomed students and guests. The house retains its original symmetrical façade, enclosed portal, grand staircase, double parlors, parlor doors, marbleized slate mantels, and triangular bay windows. Stanton served as president from 1866-1871. Stanton's son, Robert Brewster Stanton, MU '71, famed civil engineer, lived here as an undergraduate. His Miami mentor, mathematics professor Robert W. McFarland (1825-1910), purchased the house in 1873. McFarland rented it while distinguishing himself at Ohio State University during Miami's twelve-year closure, and then resided here while first president of "New Miami" (1885-1888) and until his death. McFarland's daughter Frances and her husband Llewellyn Bonham sold the home to Miami in 1940.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Miami University
On November 9, 1870, woman suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented her lecture "Our Girls" in the chapel of "Old Main" where Harrison Hall stands today. She urged her audience to enlist "fathers, husbands, and brothers" in the cause of women's rights as human rights. Stanton made the first public demand for woman's right to vote at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York, which she had helped to organize. Frederick
Douglass spoke there in support of Stanton's resolution. Stanton's closest ally Susan B. Anthony joined the cause in 1851. Their fifty-one year collaboration proved essential to ratification in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment, which finally granted women the right to vote. In Oxford, Stanton was the guest of her brother-in-law, Miami University President Robert L. Stanton, D.D.
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