Anthony attempts to start a Free church

In 1859, during a period when Rochester Unitarians were gravely impaired by factionalism, Anthony unsuccessfully attempted to start a 'Free church in Rochester ... where no doctrines should be preached and all should be welcome.' She used as her model the Boston church of Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister who helped to set the direction of his denomination by rejecting the authority of the Bible and the validity of miracles. Anthony later became close friends with William Channing Gannett, who became the minister of the Unitarian Church in Rochester in 1889, and with his wife Mary, who came from a Quaker background. William had been a national leader of the successful movement within the Unitarian denomination to end the practice of binding it by a formal creed, thereby opening its membership to non-Christians and even non-theists, a goal for the denomination that resembled Anthony's goal for her proposed Free church.