Love in the time of suffrage hikes

In 1912, suffragists working for the woman’s vote started a new form of protest: the long hike.

In December that year, General Rosalie Jones — a military title conferred on the woman who led many of these hikes — walked with 200 women from New York City to Albany to present a suffrage petition. The 170-mile, 13-day hike is considered to be the first such hike undertaken for a cause.

A year later, in February 1913, the General again led a hike, this time a 230-mile jaunt from New York City to Washington, D.C. A few dozen women, and scores of hangers-on, completed the hike, which ended with the women joining their fellow suffragists — 8,000 in all! — on a historic march down Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s all very lofty to present these hikes in all their dogged and determined glory, but the women who hiked were very human, and a lot of human drama attended their walk. I wrote about one such drama, a love story (maybe) that arose when the women walked into Princeton, New Jersey, on the night of February 13, 1913.

That night, a Princeton University freshman spotted a hiker who instantly captivated him. In my story, you’ll read what happened when “Wee Willie” Cator decided to hike along with the young suffragist, Phoebe Hawn, nicknamed “The Baby Suffragette” by the national papers and “The Brooklyn Baby” by her hometown paper, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Love or something else?

I’ve since come to wonder whether these stories of suffrage romances were more akin to the modern-day concept of stalking. On this same hike, a Brooklyn teen by the name of Roy B. Trolsen attached himself to another hiker, Helen Bergmark, when the women stopped for the night in Bordentown, NJ.

“We’re going to be married just as soon as the hike is over and we’ll settle down in Philadelphia and I’ll get a job with some civil engineering firm,” he told the press.**

Problem was that Helen didn’t agree to this vision of her future. “No, I am not going to get married. I do not know Roy Trolsen,” she said emphatically. “Whoever started such a report was cruel. It is a hoax.”***

Trolsen’s father chimed in, declaring to the press that his son was not 21-years-old, as Roy claimed, but a 17-year-old boy who was skipping school. He vowed to go retrieve his errant son. “I will stop this foolishness at once!” he said.****

It’s suffrage, stupid

This story read to me more like a case of stalking, if it indeed happened and was not a story dreamed up by the press. The press tended to romanticize the hikers, claiming the real goal of the hike was to attract husbands. They also put words into the General’s mouth, claiming the women had all vowed not to fall victim to Cupid’s arrow for the length of the hike.

As for Roy, he led a life that suggested he was a miscreant from an early age. At age 15, he stole a necklace of his mother’s and was arrested trying to pawn it. In his 20s, his wife divorced him, citing his refusal to work. In his 30s and 40s, he passed bad checks and spent time in a mental institution. In his 50s, he was involved as a truck driver in a scheme dreamed up by a pharmacist to get cut-rate drugs for his shop.

All this to say, poor Helen — and perhaps Phoebe? — was more a victim than a willing partner in these escapades on the hike. And I imagine even more women were targeted, although I suspect they put on a brave face for the public and the newspapers. They were hiking for suffrage and suffrage only, a fact that people couldn’t accept at face value.

Notes