Musings by Marguerite Kearns

Watch a video and remember me as reading a book about Rosalie Gardiner Jones decades ago. Rosalie Jones was the daughter of a prominent Long Island family who supported US women voting while her parents and sister didn’t back in 1912.

Daughter Rosalie Jones didn’t agree with the idea that her family members refused to support the “patriots” of the American Revolution. Her parents and sister agreed with the English that the American Revolution wasn’t necessary and the Brits should have prevented the American independence movement and ended the discontent.

Rosalie Jones got a great deal of publicity for her controversial “votes for women” perspective. So she led others from Long Island and other places on a “hike” to Albany, NY to speak to the governor about poll watchers and the 1915 suffrage referendum that eventually failed, followed by another NYS suffrage referendum that passed in 1917.

Rosalie Jones did this “hike” in 1912. She also did it in 1914 when Edna, Wilmer, and Serena were part of the so-called “hikers” on their way to lobby the state governor. Was the book I obtained directly relevant? No, but it was similar, so I was forced to read it. Rosalie added to the appearance that rich and prominent women supported suffrage, but this example didn’t fully match the original premise.

That’s why I’m writing and promoting the related videos in 2024 while I’m cleaning up the stacks of materials accumulated in the process of writing the book for SUNY Press that they published in 2021…An Unfinished Revolution: Edna Buckman Kearns and the Struggle for Women’s Rights.

I’ll publish the videos I made about the marches to Albany in the next posting for Suffrage Wagon News Channel.

Suffrage Wagon News Channel or SuffrageWagon.org has been publishing since 2009.