Freethought Trail Grows to 173 Sites, 141 Events

The Freethought Trail has completed its addition of Site and Event pages relating to New York State Woman Suffrage Association conventions in west-central New York, one month before the 100th anniversary of woman suffrage in the United States. These additions bring the Trail to a record 173 historic sites; 141 historical events; 35 activists and organizations; and 32 locations between Churchville, New York, on the east and Utica on the west.

Among the additions are Events pages on an 1897 suffrage-related meeting that sought to amend New York's state constitution to allow women the vote (which was not successful) and five newly covered New York State Woman Suffrage Associations:

https://freethought-trail.org/historical-events/event:local-suffrage-meeting-to-amend-nys-constitution/

https://freethought-trail.org/historical-events/event:twenty-sixth-annual-nyswsa-convention/

https://freethought-trail.org/historical-events/event:forty-third-annual-nyswsa-convention/

https://freethought-trail.org/historical-events/event:twenty-second-annual-nyswsa-convention/

https://freethought-trail.org/historical-events/event:twenty-eighth-annual-nyswsa-convention/

https://freethought-trail.org/historical-events/event:thirty-ninth-annual-nyswsa-convention/

New and significantly expanded Sites pages were added for marked or unmarked historic sites located in Ithaca, Rochester, and Geneva:

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:clinton-house/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:first-baptist-church-ithaca/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:ithaca-hotel/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:juanita-breckinridge-bates-home/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:library-hall-ithaca/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:lyceum-theater-ithaca/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:sibley-dome-cornell-university-ithaca-new-york/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:sage-chapel-cornell-university-ithaca-new-york/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:sage-hall-cornell-university/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:livingston-hotel/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:whitcomb-house-hotel/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:first-baptist-church/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:lochland/

https://freethought-trail.org/trail-map/location:hotel-nester/

"To commemorate the suffrage centenary, the Freethought Trail added forty-two additional sites since we announced the project in September 2019," said Trail director Tom Flynn. "I'd be tempting fate to say that the Trail is ever done, but our new record of 173 sites may stand for some time to come."

The Nineteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which established women's right to vote across the nation, took effect on August 26, 1920. Though many observances of the centenary were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, since the Freethought Trail is wholly virtual it was able to fulfill its plans. "A number of feminist scholars and local and regional historians were extremely helpful to us in pulling together all the information relating to these sites," said Flynn. "They are acknowledged in the particular Site and Event pages to which they contributed."

The Freethought Trail celebrates nineteenth- and early twentieth-century radical reform in west-central New York State. That region, centered on the Erie Canal, was a cauldron of social innovation that served the United States much as Southern California did later in the twentieth century. The Trail (www.freethought-trail.org) is a project of the Council for Secular Humanism, which also operates the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum in Dresden, New York.