Rosalie Gardiner Jones was born in 1883 to Mary and Oliver Livingston Jones, wealthy Oyster Bay socialites. She graduated from Adelphi College, then a women’s school, in Brooklyn and later from Brooklyn Law School.
When she was 28, Rosalie entered the suffrage movement and led two “suffrage hikes”, one from NYC to Albany, and the second from NYC to Washington DC, to bring attention to the women’s right to vote movement.
The NYC to Albany hike took thirteen days. Rosalie along with other women, walked (in skirts), through bad weather and difficult roads, a distance of 150 miles to reach their destination. They made speeches, sang songs to keep morale up, and gave interviews to the press along the way. The press dubbed her and her followers, “General Jones” and the “suffragette pilgrims”.
The NYC to Washington, DC hike covered more than 200 miles and took 20 days to finish. When the arrived in DC they joined over 5,000 of their fellow suffragists in the National Woman Suffrage Parade procession, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue toward Constitution Hall.
