They were descendants of former President Martin Van Buren, living in New York City in 1916, some four years before they had the right to vote. It was a time when women were expected to tend to the home and raise children.
They were Augusta “Gussie” Van Buren, 32, and her sister Adeline “Addie” Van Buren, 27, who made history this week in 1916, when the pair set out for Los Angeles, California from Sheepshead Bay, in Brooklyn, New York. They would each drive a $275 Indian Power Plus motorcycle, the company’s top-of-the-line bike made of vanadium steel and equipped with Firestone “non-skid” tires and gas headlights, becoming the first women to drive solo cross-country on motorcycles.
It’s an amazing achievement for the time. Yet they weren’t in it for notoriety. They were in it to prove a point.
A life in New York City society
Yet their upbringing would never suggest what they would accomplish.
The sisters were born five years apart in New York City, Augusta in 1884, and Adeline in 1889. Their famous ancestor, Martin Van Buren, served as the tenth Secretary of State under President Andrew Jackson, later becoming his vice-president before being elected eighth President of the United States in 1837, and serving through 1841. His family was among the earliest to emigrate from Holland and settle in New York.
Having been a force in New York state politics for the first few decades of the 19th century, the Van Buren family were a part of New York’s political and cultural fabric. The sisters were socialites, although they were known to be skilled at canoeing, swimming, skating, diving, wrestling, and sprinting.
Still, it must have come as a surprise as to what came next.
With World War I well underway in Europe, and the idea of American involvement growing daily, the Van Buren sisters wanted to demonstrate that women could be military dispatch riders in the event that America got engaged in the European war. The two sisters set out to show that women could handle the challenges of such a trek.
The road ahead
Setting out on such a journey was no small task in 1916.
The majority of American highways were little more than trails carved out by Native Americans and later expanded into wagon routes. Federal highways did not exist, as there was no federal framework for building them. Road signs weren’t necessary because the majority of trips were local, taken by people who knew where they were going.
Typically, travelling cross-country journeys required traveling by rail. In fact, Rand McNally’s first map, published in 1872, was a railroad map. While the arrival of the automobile changed that, most guides and maps covered East Coast cities. Once past the Mississippi River, you were on your own – and with good reason.
“There were no road maps west of the Mississippi,” said Robert Van Buren, the sisters’ great-nephew, in an interview in the Worcester Telegram. “They have limited fuel, limited water. There’s no GPS. There’re no cell phones.”
One newspaper of the time reported on the troubles the sisters encountered. “Impossible roads, unseasonable weather and difficulties in untold number and magnitude were encountered at every turn,” it reported. “Washouts, mountain slides, desert wastes and wrecked bridges delayed them, but did not deter them. Incessant rains in Colorado made riding conditions the worst imaginable, and those terrific days were followed by an equally ardent week in crossing the Great American Desert in Western Utah.”
Trials and tribulations
There were few comforts.
“They had no helmets. They just had goggles with a leather cap and leathers on. They were really exposed to the elements,” Van Buren said.
Then there were the cultural expectations, ones that seem unbelievable today. It’s a time when women were anticipated to get married, an expectation lampooned in a Vanity Fair article by 23-year-old Dorothy Parker that same year. Women wore dresses with multiple petticoats; wearing pants was unheard of, as they were considered strictly men’s clothing. The pair’s unorthodox attire got them pulled over by the police on multiple occasions, and sometimes arrested.
But on September 8, 1916, they arrived in Los Angeles, proving that women could serve as dispatch riders, allowing the military to use men for combat duty. But their accomplishment fell on deaf ears in the military. Despite the publicity their ride generated, women would not be used as dispatch riders until World War II.
After their cross-country journey, the Van Buren sisters returned to the East Coast where Adeline taught English before eventually earning a law degree from New York University, while Augusta started flying, joining the 99s, the Amelia Earhart-founded organization for women pilots.
They were inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002.
“You Can’t Tell the Military Anything” Change that to You Can’t Tell the Government Anything and you’re getting closer to the root of most problems.