Long Island and the Woman Suffrage Movement by Antonia Petrash

Author:Antonia Petrash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

EDNA BUCKMAN KEARNS

1882–1934

Woman suffrage is bound to come, and the sooner it comes the better for humanity.

–Edna Buckman Kearns

At first glance, the wagon looks a bit frail, certainly not able to carry several people over miles of bumpy Long Island roads, much less the burden of an entire social movement. Its wheels are fragile, its bed is weighted by time and its nickname, the “Spirit of 1776,” is still lightly stenciled on its side, seemingly a touch ironic. It certainly shows it age—more than one hundred and fifty years. But neither age nor use have bowed or battered it; instead, it seems endowed with a special strength that will not fade.

Use of the automobile was just emerging in the early part of the twentieth century when this wagon saw its most active days. Thousands of horse-drawn wagons were still in use then, delivering goods, helping farmers with the harvest, carrying the mail and ferrying people about. But this wagon was different. It had a mission that endowed it with the extraordinary spirit of those seeking the simple freedom of political equality. It was altogether fitting that this wagon be dubbed the “Spirit of 1776,” a time when our nation fought for political freedom from England. The women who rode in this wagon, who drove it up and down the dusty roads and country lanes of Long Island, were also seeking political freedom—the right of women to take full part in their own democracy. For this was, and still is, Edna Kearns’s Suffrage Wagon.

Edna Buckman Kearns was born in Pennsylvania on December 25, 1882, to Charles Harper Buckman and May Phipps Begley; her brother, Thomas Smith Buckman, was born in 1886. The Buckmans were Quakers (also known as members of the Religious Society of Friends), whose ancestors had arrived in 1682 with the new governor of Pennsylvania, William Penn, seeking freedom from religious persecution. The Quaker faith espouses a sacred respect for all living forms, conscientious objection to war and, especially, the equality of all men and women. The Buckman family’s faith was evident in the lives they lived: the extended Buckman family acted as conductors in Pennsylvania on the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape to freedom, and Edna’s mother, May Begley Buckman, was active in the temperance movement.

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