women’s history

Travel – Seneca Falls, NY

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Today is the third day of Women’s History Month. Typically, there’d be a proclamation from Washington, Congress and/or the White House, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that. It was clear last week when the Olympics closed for this year that the White House would only be acknowledging the white men on the men’s hockey team. Yes, they did win the gold medal, and should be congratulated, but (or is it and) the women’s hockey team also won the gold as did ten other US athletes or teams. I will say that the last time that the men’s hockey team won the gold was right here in New York forty-six years ago. They were truly a ragtag team of true amateurs. I wasn’t even in high school. The women’s team, on the other hand competed in their first Olympics in 1998, and have won a medal in every Olympics they participated in.

You may think from that introduction that this is going to be a diatribe against misogyny, for Title IX, against discrimination, for DEI (which benefits everyone), but it’s not. It is, however, the world we live in currently with Congress and the White House attempting to take women back to their dark ages. We will not let them. We are not going back.

I begin this Women’s History month with that declaration: we are not going back. We are 50% of the world. We are equal. Even though we’ve earned it, we do not need your respect, but we will not be mocked.

One way to commemorate and celebrate women is to support their spaces and we can do that by using our time and our dollars and visiting some of those spaces.

We have traveled to Canada yearly for the past several years, and each time we’ve driven west towards Niagara Falls and the Rainbow Bridge, we pass a sign on the New York State Thruway that declares the Women’s Rights Historical National Park, and every time I see that sign, I say (out loud), I want to go there one day. And maybe one day, I will.

Links

Begin at the Visitors’ Center and visit the historic houses there that include:

  • Wesleyan  Methodist Church
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton House
  • M’Clintock House
  • Richard Hunt House
  • Amelia Bloomer House

There is also a trail through the area that includes the following sites:

Travel – Following in Susan B. Anthony’s Footsteps

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One year, on our way to Canada, we stopped in Rochester, New York. My boys wanted to visit a comic store (of course), and since we were in Rochester, I suggested we visit Susan B. Anthony’s gravesite (Section C, Plot 93). I wanted my daughter to see a symbol of one of the pioneers of suffrage and women’s right to vote. Especially because when I mentioned that she had been on the dollar coin, there was a little confusion and looking up the difference between the Anthony dollar and the Sacajawea one. Driving to Niagara Falls and the Canadian border, west on I-90, there are several signs for women’s history from Seneca Falls, NY (birthplace of women’s rights) to Auburn, NY (home of Harriet Tubman).

I’ve written before about Susan B. Anthony and suffrage. They can be found by searching my tags in the search bar to the left. Below find some places to visit related to Susan B. and women’s rights as well as the surrounding area.

There are no falls in Seneca Falls.

Susan B. Anthony’s gravesite can be found at the Mount Hope Cemetery. Frederick Douglass may also be found in his final resting place here.

National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House

Near her house is the Susan B. Anthony Park.

Women’s Rights National Historical Park

                Things to do there

National Women’s Hall of Fame – reopening in the spring

Spend 48 Hours in Seneca Falls (from the I Love NY site)

Also visit this online, virtual, “museum without walls”: National Women’s History Museum

And this online feature at the New York State Museum: Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial

Rochester Region Suffrage Timeline

Play Women’s Hall of Fame Solitaire

Finally, use the Freethought Trail to plan your journeys for the following (more available on the website):

                Women’s Rights Sites

                Women’s Suffrage Conventions Trail

     Susan B. Anthony Sites

                Seneca Lake Sites

Sybil Ludington’s Ride

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Sybil Ludington postage stamp, USPS, public domain. (c)2019

​We all know Paul Revere and we practically take the Longfellow poem as historical fact and we pass our elementary social studies exams and move on, probably never thinking about the rest of the country during The Revolutionary War. Several years ago I read a novel by former President Jimmy Carter that centered on Georgia during the Revolution. It was eye-opening in that I never considered the part of the colonies further south than Virginia. As a New Yorker, I am both excited but also sad that it took this long into adulthood before I even heard her name and then to discover a new Revolutionary hero from right here in New York: Sybil Ludington.

She wasn’t very widely known outside of her home areas around Kent and Patterson, New York.

On April 26, 1777 (two hundred forty-two years ago today), at age 16, Sybil rode her horse, Star to alert the Revolutionary militia forces in Putnam County, New York and as far as Danbury, Connecticut. Her ride was more than twice the distance of that than Paul Revere, longer than any of the other men to have made similar rides. She began at around 9pm, and rode forty miles in darkness until about dawn.

Her father was Colonel Henry Ludington and Sybil’s intention was to warn her father’s troops. It was believed that Danbury was targeted because they had a Continental Army supply depot there. At home, she also thwarted a royalist from capturing her father and turning him over to the British.

A statue of her on her horse depicting the ride is erected in Carmel, New York. That statue is also the ending place of a yearly 50K footrace that approximately follows her historic ride.

She is buried in Patterson, NY and has had her ride commemorated on a postage stamp in 1975.

Learn more here:

Historic Patterson

Sybil Ludington’s Statue in Carmel, NY

The Future is Female

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In honor of the March for Science, held today across the country, a little word art. There are two women’s names that I’ve listed with only a last initial. Those are two women scientists I know in my personal life. They are an inspiration to me in more ways than one, and certainly more than just scientifically. 

We all have those girls and women in our lives.

Who are yours?

The Future is Female, done for the March for Science, April 22, 2017. Word Art. (c)2017