by Marguerite Kearns

Working with my mother Wilma Kearns Culp during the 1980s was transformative. She had reached a point in her later life when this collaboration was exactly what she needed. I was involved in another issue, so researching our family history was both “wonderful” and “challenging. For her, the exercise was “stimulating.” Wilma did her best in an era before much had been digitized.

WHAT I DID WHEN I LIVED IN WOODSTOCK, NEW YORK

I accompanied my mom on trips to neighborhoods where ancestors had lived. We visited libraries, historical societies, and bookstores. Wilma was interested in lifestyles as well as genealogical relationships. Our focus was often solely her mother, Edna Buckman Kearns, the activist, the peace supporter, the Quaker.

This is how I learned a great deal. My focus was on the material that went into my first book for SUNY Press, and the green light I later obtained by one of the editors there. The book about Edna Kearns was published in 2021, the year after the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the US Constitution.

WEEKENDS SPENT IN THE PHOTO STUDIO OF PETER SINCLAIR

I spent weekends when I lived in Woodstock, New York, copying photos from our family archive. Part of my responsibilities were to clean up the disorganization and to identify the names and personal histories of the individuals in the family groups. I did this and more, including publishing a newsletter for the Buckman Family Reunion for several years when I served as president. Then the organization folded, and I spent time at the Friends Historical Library setting up a digital file for the reunion years.

Also, I did little else but work on getting someone I loved released from state prison. Both were time-consuming projects. This was prior to when I lived in New Mexico starting in the 1990s. Between my responsibilities at the newspaper, Woodstock Times, and these extra-curricular projects, I was active and involved full time.

FINDING OUT THE FALLOUT OF THE METHODS WE RELIED ON

It wasn’t until decades later that I found out that my mother also made promises of the ownership of artifacts to people, without a written confirmation, and without my awareness or agreement on my part. She also gave copies of the photos of ancestors that I had spent hundreds of hours copying without any attribution of the effort from me.

I kept journals of such activities, sort of, but here is where I am really wrapping things up when writing this in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am not sure how I will summarize this period starting in 1986 when I was getting the foundation sorted out that later ended up with me writing the book for SUNY Press and then, onward to the first exhibition of the “Spirit of 1776” suffrage campaign wagon that I officially donated to the NYS Museum in 2003.

The museum staff in Albany, NY, has done a terrific job with the wagon since then, although plans are still underway to place the wagon in the artifacts museum’s exhibition. Suffrage Wagon News Channel is really SuffrageWagon.org that has been ongoing since 2009.

Wilma passed to The Other Side in November 1997 from a fatal heart attack. Then I spent time with my father, Joel W. Culp, in Jim Thorpe, PA, listening to and documenting his life stories, Oh, was I busy!

Suffrage Wagon News Channel has been publishing since 2009.