Artifact NY: The Spirit of 1776 Suffrage Wagon

Jane Van De Bogart raced into Woodstock town board meetings with her nose pointing in the direction of her council seat.¹ She balanced stacks of books, maps, and reports under each arm. The monthly session would have the usual budget line items to discuss, a zoning report to review, and one more town employee to advise about New York's Freedom of Information legislation.

Jane stopped, laid down her burden, and yanked a steno pad from the stack to check off another task completed. She added three more items. Jane Van De Bogart modeled multitasking before the rest of us ever heard the term. The town of Woodstock in the Hudson Valley teemed with vocal and visible individuals like Van De Bogart, those determined to "change the world" during the 1970s. Many locals were convinced the town of Woodstock should remain as it had always been—a laid-back retreat stirring from Memorial to Labor Day.

In the years after the Festival of 1969, Woodstock residents reluctantly came to terms with the transition from a part-time to a year-round town. Did the community need a conventional or a custom solution to take care of the disposal of municipal sewage? Town board members considered additions to a community master plan and circulated progress reports on the town's projected growth. Council members like Van De Bogart immersed themselves in detail. I survived hours of public deliberations by taking copious notes and then heading to the newspaper office to file my articles before the Tuesday deadline. Reporting for Woodstock Times, I believed, had to be one of the best jobs in town.

"What drives you to serve on the town board?" I asked Jane Van de Bogart.

"Among other things—my great aunt Elisabeth Freeman and what I heard about her pounding the pavements for the women's suffrage movement," she replied. "I owe my ability to represent the people of Woodstock to my great aunt, Elisabeth."

"My grandmother Edna organized for votes for women, too," I told her.

We weren't aware then that Jane's great aunt, Elisabeth Freeman (1876–1942), not only knew Edna but they had worked together for what they called "The Cause." Both were wagon women, on-the-ground organizers who drove horse-drawn wagons to mobilize support for women's voting rights. New York's men, as voters, were in the position of approving these rights. But would they?

Novel organizing techniques such as horse-drawn wagons took the women activists to locations in rural areas where they might not otherwise have canvassed. Advocates on both sides of the voting issue flooded the state, from top to bottom, during the 1915 referendum campaign that failed, and then again in 1917 when New York's women celebrated a statewide voting victory. Elisabeth Freeman and Edna Kearns were in the forefront of these on-the-ground efforts.

The suffrage campaign wagons used by Edna Kearns, Elisabeth Freeman, and Rosalie Jones provided visibility and mobility. Edna drove the "Spirit of 1776" vehicle in New York City and on Long Island. Elisabeth and Rosalie traveled in another wagon within Long Island and around New York State. They also drove to Massachusetts, Ohio, and Washington, DC. Rosalie Jones was from an old Long Island family that had self-identified as Tories during the American Revolution. Except for Rosalie, her family members generations later were sympathetic to the "antis," those who opposed women voting.

Wagons on the suffrage campaign trail were popular attention getters. A woman driving one with freedom messages might not sound like a cutting-edge organizing tactic today. But during an era when horse-drawn vehicles hit the streets for the women's cause, the vehicles attracted publicity, and, best of all, crowds.

Wagons required skill in driving. Occasionally the women managed the wagons themselves. Often they hired someone to handle the horse so they could concentrate on public speaking. Wagons provided instant speakers' platforms. Pedestrians and others responded to the suffragists' impromptu demonstrations and rallies with curiosity, support, and heightened emotion. Jones, Kearns, and Freeman wrote articles for publication, agreed...