Following Up: The Fate of the Pilgrim's Romance

On December 26, 1912, in its account of Christmas Day spent in Hudson, the New York Press reported that Gladys Coursen, the Vassar graduate who joined General Jones's army in Poughkeepsie, had agreed to marry Griffith Bonner, the zealous suitor who had, for her, taken up the cause of woman suffrage and was pursuing her on the pilgrimage to Albany. While there is no evidence that he followed her all the way to the Capitol, it is pretty certain that he got as far as Hudson, and one likes to imagine that he escorted her to the Christmas charity ball to benefit the Hudson Hospital.

As a token of their engagement, Bonner gave Coursen not a diamond engagement ring but his fraternity pin, and he told the New York Press reporter: "Miss Coursen has put me on a three-month probation. She wants to be sure I will devote my entire time to her, as is natural. My social duties, of course, have made it necessary for me to have many young woman friends, but I intend to show her I can be true." One would like to think that Bonner passed the fidelity test and that he and Coursen got married and lived happily ever after, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

In 1912, the Poughkeepsie city directory shows Gladys Coursen, whose profession is given as violinist, living in her father's house at 32 Hammersley. Her father is Alfred Coursen, who, the directory indicates, is the editor of the Evening Star. Griffith Bonner is also listed in the 1912 Poughkeepsie city directory, as a reporter for the Evening Star who boards at 91 Garden. A search of the newspapers at Fulton History and the records at Ancestry.com yielded neither an account of the wedding of Gladys Coursen and Griffith Bonner nor a marriage license.

Instead, in 1916, Gladys Coursen appears in the New York City directory living at 54 West 50th Street, which according to the Sanborn map for 1916 was a four-story brick building with basement, and in 1918, Griffith Bonner filed a draft registration card in Lafayette, Indiana, giving his occupation as "reporter, The Morning Journal." 

Maybe they had a really long engagement. 

The photograph of Gladys Coursen shown above appeared in the New York Sun on December 30, 1912.