Friday, December 28, 2012

The Suffragist Army Marches On

This account of the suffragettes' continuing misadventures in Columbia County appeared in the New York Sun on December 28, 1912.

SUFFRAGE ARMY THROWN OUT OF AUTO INTO MUD

None Hurt, and General Jones Says the Accident 
Will Be a Tonic.

THEY'RE NOW AT VALATIE

Marchers Expect to Push Ahead To-day and Enter 
Albany This Evening.

ALBANY, Dec. 27--The suffragette army headed by Gen. Rosalie Jones was close to annihilation to-night when an automobile which had been pressed into service to carry the suffragettes to a meeting in a farmhouse skidded and ran down an embankment, throwing the women into the mud.

The accident occurred just north of Valatie, where the suffragettes are spending the night after a hard day plodding through sleet and mud. 

The army halted at Pine Bush Inn in Valatie long after nightfall and after a bath and change of clothing resolved to address a suffrage meeting at the home of Joseph Valentine, where a number of men and women had gathered to hear Gen. Jones talk. The Valentine farmhouse is three miles north of Valatie and an automobile was secured.

It was on the return to Pine Bush Inn that the accident happened. None was injured except Gen. Jones, who after declaring that the accident would act as a "tonic" complained of a slightly bruised arm.

After a long wait in the driving rain the suffragettes sighted the lights of an automobile. The car was hailed by Gen. Jones. Two agreeable young men agreed to carry the suffragettes back to Pine Bush Inn.

The army covered almost twenty miles to-day, the last but one of the pilgrimage. In talking of the march Gen. Jones to-night remarked that the customary six or seven miles first covered by the army was a sort of "pink tea stunt."

The anabasis of the suffragettes will [take place tomorrow and was] mapped out to-night in Valatie, with a triumphal march across the Rensselaer Bridge into Albany.   

When the suffragettes reach East Greenbush hamlet, several miles south of Albany, to-morrow noon they will be met by a delegation from the Equal Suffrage Club of Albany, of which Mrs. Joseph Gavit is the mainspring. Besides Mrs. Gavit the party from Albany includes the Misses Harriet and Grace Mussell, Miss Caro Arnold of Albany and Miss Mary Fitzgerald of New York.

Gen. Jones will be the guest while in Albany of Mrs. Joseph Gavit.

The suffragettes are now two days ahead of their original schedule. The message which they are bearing will be presented to Gov. Sulzer immediately after his inauguration on January 1.

KINDERHOOK, Dec. 27--With the exception of the day before Christmas when they entered Hudson in a blizzard, this was the most backaching day the marching suffragists have had. The seven of them began splashing north this morning at Stockport, singing the "Pilgrims' Chorus." It had rained all night and the clay road thawed enough to let mud over the women's boot tops.

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