The “Spirit of 1776” was used by Edna Buckman Kearns in the state suffrage campaign organizing in New York State. It was donated by I.S. Remson, a Brooklyn carriage maker, to the New York State Woman Suffrage Association in 1913. The presentation to the state organization made big news at the time, including an article in the New York Times and the NY Tribune. Part of the attention given to the old wagon stemmed from the belief that it had been built by a revolutionary patriot on Long Island in 1776. This was part of its appeal when it traveled from town to town on Long Island and when it was featured in New York City suffrage parades.

The legend about the wagon’s origins no doubt was responsible for the fact that the wagon was preserved and it has survived to the present day. Other horse-drawn suffrage wagons were used on trips and in suffrage organizing, but most --if not all-- reverted to other uses after their missions were fulfilled. Only in the past decade has it become known for certain that the “Spirit of 1776” was built later, perhaps after 1820, and not in 1776 as officials of the wagon donor company, I.S. Remson, believed. The wagon is important as a symbol of grassroots campaign organizing of the period. The suffrage campaign wagon is in the permanent collection of the New York State Museum in Albany, New York.   MORE

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The article about the suffrage wagon’s presentation to the movement that appeared in the New York Times, July 1, 1913.

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