1913 Suffrage Rally to Be Recreated
The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons will celebrate the 100th anniversary of suffrage in New York State — three years before the ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution — next Thursday with the recreation of a rally that took place in East Hampton 104 years ago.
While New York celebrations have taken place throughout 2017, Arlene Hinkemeyer, the vice president of the League chapter, has focused on a 1913 event when East Hampton women gathered in the front yard of a house belonging to May Groot Manson, chairwoman of the executive committee of the Woman Suffrage League of East Hampton, to meet Harriot Stanton Blatch, the president of the Women’s Political Union.
Wearing white shirtwaists or skirts and gold sashes that read Votes for Women, more than 150 women then marched up the middle of Main Street to Town Pond for an open-air meeting. A roadside historic marker was recently placed outside the house, at 117 Main Street.
“I’m in awe of the women that did all of this,” Ms. Hinkemeyer said. “It’s hard to imagine all of this took place.”
Women have been asked to wear white dresses next Thursday and to gather at 2 p.m. along the brick wall in front of the Manson house to recreate the march. Mary Jane Brock, who with her husband, Charles, now owns the house, will greet the marchers, and a snare drummer will lead the way up Main Street toward brief stops at Clinton Academy and at The East Hampton Star before ending with a program and refreshments at the East Hampton Library.
Coline Jenkins, a descendant of Harriot Stanton Blatch and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — the co-head of the 1848 Seneca Falls Conference — will say a few words, as will East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and Hugh King, the village historian. Also expected to speak is Lieut. Gov. Kathy Hochul, chairwoman of the New York State Women’s Suffrage 100th Anniversary Commemoration Commission.
Ms. Hinkemeyer said she is expecting around 100 attendees, who might even wish to hold signs bearing the names of prominent 1913 marchers, and wear gold sashes, which will be sold for $10 to support the League of Women Voters. East Hampton High School students will make a short video of the events, to be shown on Oct. 19 at a Tom Twomey Lecture Series program on the suffrage centennial at the library.
The headline on an earlier version of this story gave the wrong year for the 1913 rally.