84 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • MARCH 2018 84 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 84 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
REAR VIEW
Still, she persisted
How L.I.’s Irene Corwin Davison helped win women’s right to vote
By ANNIE WILKINSON
In mid-1800s America, citizens
were defined as male, not female;
nonwhite men and freed slaves
could vote, but women couldn’t;
and married women could not own
property in their own right or make
legal contracts on their own behalf.
To protect her rights, Irene Corwin
Davison never married, instead
working to improve unfair working
conditions for women and children,
inadequate public health programs,
and discriminatory education
practices.
Tall and intelligent, Davison was
a dedicated reformer, organizer,
marcher, poll-watcher, canvasser,
and generous member of the
community. She instigated change
using her plucky personality, her
financial freedom — and a sturdy
old wagon.
WHO WILL DARN OUR
SOCKS?
Her father, Oliver Davison, an area
pioneer, ran the grist- and saw mill
he inherited. One of the few free
entry ports, the “Near Rockaway”
business prospered.
His daughter, Irene, was born in
1871. After completing college
preparatory courses at Brooklyn’s
Packer Collegiate Institute and
graduating from Pratt Institute, she
taught art in Jericho schools, and
was one of the first women to open
her own insurance agency.
Years earlier, New York State
had been dubbed the “Cradle of
the Women’s Movement” after
the organized women’s rights
convention in Seneca Falls in 1848.
At the convention’s heart was the
quest for suffrage: the right to
vote in political elections. Their
Declaration of Sentiments outlined
rights that women citizens should
have, by adding to the Declaration
of Independence “all men and
women are created equal.”
The opposition reacted: One
newspaper even ran editorials
asking who would darn socks if
women got the vote.
During the Civil War, suffragists
concentrated on abolishing slavery.
By the late 1890s, they regrouped,
joining the Progressives. With
social services struggling with
industrialization, urbanization, and
European immigration, suffragists
fought to open health clinics,
outlaw child labor, and improve
factory conditions.
A BIGGER CROWD
In 1902, in her early 30s,
Davison joined women from East
Rockaway’s oldest families to
exchange books. Drawing strength
from reading, by 1906, they had
built the new East Rockaway Free
Library. Davison and her two older
sisters worked for suffrage, which
was making headway.
In March 1913, the day before
U.S. President-elect Woodrow
Wilson’s inauguration, crowds were
expected. But the Pennsylvania
Avenue suffragists upstaged him.
“Where are the people?,” he reportedly
asked, and was told, “On the Avenue
watching the suffragists parade.”
Those 8,000 marchers called for a
constitutional convention. Many
were attacked by the mostly male
spectators; police allegedly ignored
the violence and 100 marchers
were hospitalized. The event
generated national attention and
congressional hearings — but no
legislation.
STILL, SHE PERSISTED
Several months later, Davison
helped engineer a hugely successful
publicity stunt. It was July 1,
summer’s peak, when she left
Manhattan, drawn by their horse
“Suffragette” in a one-horse shay
built in 1776. The wagon bore
banners saying, “Votes for Women”
and yellow knapsacks (the color of
suffrage). Davison, then 42, rode
with suffragist Edna Buckman
Kearns, dressed in hot minutemen
garb, and Kearns’ daughter, 8-yearold
Serena.
They headed to Long Island for a
month of speeches at meetings and
rallies. Another “wagon woman,”
Rosalie Jones of Cold Spring
Harbor, often drove her yellow
wagon next to them. They were
among many activists crisscrossing
the Island and major U.S. cities
from 1913 to 1915.
The news-savvy Davison helped
stage a September 1913 event that
drew hundreds of women and men.
For the Aerial Party encampment
on the Hempstead Plains aviation
field (now Roosevelt Field), 50
women slept in a hangar. Davison
later worked as a poll watcher,
asking Sayville voters to sign
statements saying that the vote
should be granted to New York
women in 1915. The following
year, Davison became president of
the South Side Political Equality
League of Lynbrook and East
Rockaway. When her father died in
1916, the 45-year-old, considered
an “old maid,” sold his farm to
create one of the Island’s first
housing developments.
DETERMINED AND
DISTINGUISHED
In 1920, after decades of activism,
women were granted the vote in
national elections. The New York
Times wrote that women succeeded
“despite the fears of anti-suffragists
that when a woman received the
right to vote, ‘political gossip would
cause her to neglect the home,
forget to mend our clothes and
burn the biscuits.’”
Davison continued educating
women on the importance of
voting. The League of Women
Voters named her Nassau County
outstanding suffragette and listed
her name on a bronze plaque in
Albany. She died on November 12,
1948, and was buried in Rockville
Cemetery in Lynbrook.
Suffrage Wagon heads to Long Island in the summer of 1913. L-R: Edna
Kearns, Serena Kearns, Irene Davison. (Library of Congress)