Huntington village was crowded with hundreds of shoppers on the night of Saturday, July 26, 1913 when the fife and drum corps of the Huntington Fire Department led a parade down Main Street to the corner of Wall Street. The marchers came to rally support for women’s suffrage. A new symbol of their cause—a Revolutionary war era wagon—added to the controversy of their cause and led to a confrontation with local anti-suffragists.
Women had been agitating for the right to vote since at least the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. The effort made little headway over the next seven decades until a new generation took up the cause, working at both the state and national levels to secure votes for women.
Long Island women were particularly active in working for the right to vote. One prominent leader of the movement on Long Island was Edna Buckman Kearns, a young mother, writer, and editor from Rockville Centre. In addition to writing about the movement in local newspapers, she led marches and rallies across Long Island.
In 1913, the movement received a gift that would help to draw attention to the cause—a wagon built by a Huntington patriot during the American Revolution. Dubbed “The Spirit of 1776,” the wagon was used to ferry Mrs. Kearns and her six-year-old daughter Serena from village to village and served as a speakers’ platform at rallies. The wagon was given to the suffragists by the Brooklyn based I.S. Remsen carriage manufacturing company. A.F. Wilson, president of the Remsen company, remembered that as a small boy shortly after the Civil War, he knew of an old farmer names Daniel Hewlett. Years later, in 1892, Wilson purchased Hewlett’s old wagon from one of the family’s employees. For the next twenty years, the I.S. Remsen company used the wagon—said to be the oldest on Long Island—as an advertising gimmick.
The Spirit of 1776
On July 1, 1913, the company donated the wagon to the suffragists to use to promote their cause. The wagon was said to have been built in 1776 by Ebenezer Conklin, a Huntington native and supporter of the Revolutionary cause. Just as the men of 1776 fought taxation without representation, so too did the women of 1913 fight for the same cause.
Suffragists, most notably Rosalie Jones of Cold Spring Harbor, had used wagons before to promote their cause. General Jones, as she became known, travelled across Long island with a yellow wagon to rally support for the cause. She later led a 140-mile march from New York City to Albany in December 1912 in order to petition the newly elected Governor, William Sulzer, to support votes for women. Six weeks later, General Jones led her army on a 245-mile march from New York City to Washington to petition the newly elected President, Woodrow Wilson. Coincidentally, General Jones was a descendant of the Hewlett family, who had once owned “The Spirit of 1776” wagon.
The Spirit of 1776 at Long Beach
Likewise, “The Spirit of 1776” wagon travelled throughout Long Island during July 1913. On July 26, Mrs. Kearns and her daughter brought the wagon to Huntington. The suffragists met at the home of Ida Bunce Sammis, who had founded the Huntington Political Equality League two years earlier. Mrs. Sammis hosted regular meetings at her home at 70 Main Street, which still stands today next to the entrance to the YMCA.
The suffragists, led by the Fife and Drum Corps, marched down Main Street to the First National Bank building on the northeast corner of Main and Wall Streets. When the parade reached its destination, Mrs. Oliver L. Jones, mother of Rosalie Jones, stopped the parade and demanded to know by what right the suffragists were using her ancestor’s wagon to promote votes for women. Mrs. Jones was a fierce anti-suffragist. She pointed out that the Hewletts were Tories during the Revolution and that their wagon should not be used to promote the suffrage cause. Mrs. Jones threatened legal action, but it is not known if she ever followed through on the threat. One wonders what the dinner conversations were like in the Jones mansion overlooking Cold Spring Harbor.
The suffragists finally succeeded in New York State when they gained the vote in 1917. In the first election in which women could vote the following year, two women were elected to the New York State Assembly. One of them was Huntington’s own Ida Bunce Sammis.
The wagon remained in the Kearns family until Mrs. Kearns’ granddaughter, Marguerite Kearns, donated it to the New York State Museum around 2003. It has been exhibited in 2010, 2012 and most recently in 2017-18 as part of an exhibit to mark the centennial of women securing the right to vote in New York State. It is expected to be on display again in 2020 to mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the United State Constitution. With a better understanding of the history of wagon development, the museum concluded that the wagon was probably built some time between 1820 and 1840. It is in the style of a nineteenth century pleasure wagon; eighteenth century wagons didn’t have springs. Whatever its true age, the wagon was always a symbol and one that helped in some small way to secure votes for women.
The Spirit of 1776 at the New York Museum
A historical marker to commemorate the 1913 rally was unveiled on the corner of Main and Wall Streets on April 24, 2018.
All photographs herein are from the archives of Edna Buckman Kearns, courtesy of Marguerite Kearns.
To learn more about the local fight to secure votes for women, read Long Island and the Woman Suffrage Movement, by Antonia Petrash (History Press 2013).
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