Episode 155: Marguerite Kearns, her Family, and the Suffrage Movement

The Long Island History Project

In 2020 we marked the centennial of woman suffrage and the passing of the 19th amendment. Although the intervening 102 years can make that struggle feel like the distant past, the story of the many people who fought and marched and pushed for the right to vote is very much alive. Marguerite Kearns keeps one such story before our eyes in her book An Unfinished Revolution (SUNY Press).

The book presents the life of her grandparents, Edna Buckman and Wilmer Kearns, and their extended world of Pennsylvania relatives, fellow Quakers, and suffrage activists. Living in Rockville Center in 1905, Edna and Wilmer were in the thick of grassroots organizing on Long Island and New York City. The stories that Marguerite heard from her mother and grandfather, along with her own extensive research, form a picture of loving, dedicated, real people making the best of their lives and making history.

On today's episode, Marguerite shares how she learned that story and how she wove it into a book rich with photographs and the words of Edna and Wilmer.

Further Research

• An Unfinished Revolution (SUNY Press) by Marguerite Kearns
• Bearing Witness: A Family Legacy
• [Spirit of 1776] Wagon (NYS Museum)
• Long Island and the Woman Suffrage Movement
• Dr. "General" Rosalie Jones (National Park Service)
• Women’s Suffrage: Pictures of Suffragists and their Activities (Library of Congress)
• Image credit: Edna Kearns (circa 1915). Image courtesy of Marguerite Kearns used under a CC BY -SA 3.0 license.