by Marguerite Kearns

This image is one of the road and street markers on Long Island in New York State funded by the Pomeroy Foundation (Long Beach, NY) honoring my grandmother, Edna Buckman Kearns, who lived in New York City and Rockville Centre, NY with her husband and later, first daughter Serena, my mother’s older sister born in 1905. It’s one of many venues I made sure my grandmother Edna Buckman Kearns would be featured in during the 40 plus years I spent as a volunteer bringing her name and activities out from the shadows.

When I proposed in the early 1980s that my mother and I research our family history, I was the only individual among the people I knew who were proposing and surviving such a collaboration. I had no idea that I would inherit endless boxes of her original research, plus a vivid tale I have begun sharing by way of state-of-the-art technology and a book published in 2021 by SUNY Press (State of New York).

Suffrage Wagon Cafe continues its special programming! from Marguerite Kearns on Vimeo.

THE PROCESS INVOLVES THE DONATION OF ITEMS THAT DON’T BELONG TO CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS

I donated Edna’s horse-drawn suffrage campaign wagon to the State of New York in approximately 2003. And in 2024, I am following up with this rescue effort by donating Edna’s partial collection to a major women’s history archive. The phone and a photo of Edna using it—she “smiled and dialed” in organizing support and money for “the suffrage cause.” Ofcourse, a few family members are giving me a “hard time” now about the phone. But eventually they will step back because they realize that this is the right thing to do. Edna Buckman Kearns believed that her suffrage organizing support work was in the realm of “the cause.” As such, the wag0n, the telephone, and everything Edna did was to support the eventual goal of US women voting.

WORKING IN MY GRANDMOTHER EDNA KEARNS’ “BEST INTEREST”

The collection project involves all of the work involved in me bringing a behind-the-scenes individual like my grandmother Edna into the mainstream. The process for me was not only a labor of love, but it involved a bucking bronco of a tale. Some have called it “boring.” Nonsense.  I sum up Edna’s procedure and involvement as “grunt work,” the kind of involvement that others build on and supported.

Sometimes I say that my effort was spread over a 50 year period. Now I say it’s more like 40 plus years—the specifics aren’t as important as the scope of the project. It was a long long time that covered decades.

SuffrageWagon.org has been publishing since 2009.