The Long Island Museum, located in Stony Brook, New York has on display the historic suffrage wagon which played a major role in the woman suffrage movement on Long Island.

The wagon was owned by Long Island suffragist Edna Buckman Kearns from Rockville Centre, a writer and editor of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Appropriately dubbed the Spirit of 1776, the wagon was a gift from the New York State Suffrage Association. Edna would load the horse-drawn wagon with pamphlets promoting suffrage, and, along with her young daughter Serena travel the length and breadth of the Island, making speeches, selling buttons and armbands, all designed to encourage political equality for all through Votes for Women.

Edna’s granddaughter, Marguerite Kearns donated the wagon to the New York State Museum in Albany, and they in turn have lent it to the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook. While it may look fragile it still exudes the strength of its contribution to a compelling social movement that changed the world.

The wagon will be on display at the museum until May 18, 2025. For further information, check out their website, longislandmuseum.org.