3 Images of History
Henry Ford on his Quadricycle, 1896, Detroit, Michigan [public domain]
Fanny Sams Bell is third from the driver, front row. Women’s Suffragettes in Florida, circa 1907. Photo from Sams Family Archives, courtesy of Teresa Bridges.
Sarah Barnwell Elliott (1848-1928), circa 1897. Writer and Suffragette. Photo enhanced by My Heritage.
2 Moments in History
4 June 1896 Henry Ford successfully tested his first experimental automobile (129 years ago today)
He named it the “Quadricycle” because it had four bicycle tires. He had been working on it for two years in his shed behind his house on Bagley Avenue in Detroit. Finally, it was ready for testing, but he hit a snag: it was too wide to fit through the workshop door. Ford took an axe to the doorframe and the surrounding bricks, and soon the Quadricycle was travelling down Grand River Avenue.
4 June 1919 Congress approved the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote (106 years ago today)
Getting to this point was a very long, torturous road. Some sources trace its roots to 1776 when Abigail Adams asked her husband John to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors” when approving the Constitution. [The Writer’s Almanac, June 4, 2014] The movement for Women’s Rights grew into a national movement soon after the Civil War, as our nation’s healing turned to granting voting rights to black men. The exclusion of women in those early days of Reconstruction when debating the scope of our Fifteenth Amendment added fuel to the Suffragettes’ cause. Dataw Island’s legacy is tied to four individuals connected to the Women’s Suffrage Movement: Sarah Barnwell Elliott, Kate Gleason, Fanny Sams Bell, and Conway Whittle Sams. Sarah was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement at both the state and national levels. Kate was a great industrialist who purchased Datha Island in 1927. Fanny was one of the millions of women across the nation who proactively worked for women’s rights. Conway, a lawyer in Virginia, was vehemently against giving women the right to vote! Read more here.
1 Memory Preserved
“Many of you have heard the story about my first Beaufort City Council meeting in late 1974 where the discussion was focused on the need for a parking garage. One comment was “if we do not get a parking garage immediately downtown it will die!” Well, 51 years later downtown is as strong as ever and we don’t have a parking garage.”
Cynthia Jenkins
Historic Beaufort Foundation Director
From a public letter announcing her retirement
May 29, 2025
Sources
Dataw Historic Foundation blog
Wikipedia Commons
The Writers Almanac