This Week in American History: 1916 – Two Women Cross America on Motorcycles

Here is what happened this week in American History.

• Sept. 3. On this day in 1925, the USS Shenandoah passes through an area of thunderstorms and severe turbulence that rips her apart. The Shenandoah was the first of four rigid airships constructed at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, near Trenton, New Jersey. She was launched on Aug. 20, 1923, commencing her maiden voyage two weeks later. The Shenandoah was 680 feet long, weighed 36 tons, and had a range of 5,000 miles. She was powered by six 300-horsepower Packard engines with a top speed of 69 miles per hour. The frame included 20 gas cells containing helium for lift. Shenandoah was participating in a promotional flight to the Midwest when she hit the bad weather. Turbulence tore the airship into three main pieces that crashed near Caldwell, Ohio. Twenty-nine people survived while 14 died including two who fell out of the airship and plummeted to the ground. Several memorials can be found where the three main sections of Shenandoah crashed.

• Sept. 4. In 1781, a group of 44 Spanish settlers settle in what is now California and name their settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de los Angeles, or The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels. Today the city is known as Los Angeles.

• Sept. 5. Today in 1776, the Battle of Long Island having concluded several days before, British forces captured several high-ranking Continental officers including Major Gen. John Sullivan who was well known to the British having served as a politician, judge, and delegate to the Continental Congress. Sullivan was convinced to offer peace overtures to the Continental Congress and released on parole to do so. Having won the Battle of Long Island, the British were rather proud of themselves, but the Continental Army had won battles prior to July 4. After Sullivan’s conciliatory speech to the Continental Congress, John Adams called him a “decoy-duck” and said Sullivan’s mission was “to seduce us into a renunciation of our independence.” However, three members of Congress agreed to meet with British authorities “to ask a few questions and take answers” but they were given no authority to make decisions. The three included Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge.

• Sept. 6. On this day in 1946, US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes announced the US would assist in the economic reconstruction of postwar Germany. Sixteen months after World War II had ended in Germany, little progress had been made toward recovery. Germans faced starvation daily, scrounging for food and bare necessities. The cities were little more than massive piles of rubble, and much of the infrastructure remained in ruins.

• Sept. 7. In 1943, a desk clerk in the Gulf Hotel in Houston, Texas, is alerted to smoke from a smoldering mattress. The clerk and a few guests extinguish the mattress and stuff it into a closet on the second floor. The fire department was never called, though the central station is only a few blocks away. A few moments later, fire erupts from the closet and quickly spreads to the third floor. Far from being a prestigious hotel, the three-story Gulf Hotel serves the old, crippled, or drunk at 40 cents a night for a room, or 20 cents per cot in a communal sleeping area. It will take firefighters nearly two hours to bring the fire under control and 55 people die with some of those having jumped to the ground from the third floor. Twenty-three of those victims were never identified.

• Sept. 8. Today in 1916, two women arrive in Los Angeles after a perilous and difficult 60-day, 5,500-mile ride across the country on motorcycles. Descendents of Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, sisters Augusta and Adeline Van Buren were active in the Preparedness Movement as America was about to be drawn into World War I. The two sisters were determined to show military officials that women could serve as dispatch riders which would free up men for other duties. Wearing military style leggings and leather riding breeches, on July 4 the women mounted Indian Power Plus 1,000 cc motorcycles left Sheepshead Bay Race Track in Brooklyn, New York. The stories that came from that adventure make excellent reading. Despite their success, the military refused to utilize women as dispatch riders but it did prove critical to the women’s suffrage movement and adoption of the 19th Amendment. Long after their deaths, the two women were inducted into the America Motorcyclist Association Hall of Fame and into the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum & Hall of Fame.

• Sept. 9. On this day in 1776, Continental soldiers taken as prisoners by British forces are considered traitors to the crown and subject to being shot or hung. In an effort to maintain what loyalty the crown still has in the colonies, they do neither. Instead, prisoners are kept on prison ships docked or anchored in larger ports such as New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and later St. Augustine. Execution might have been better as conditions onboard those ships were appalling. It is estimated that 20,000 Americans were captured during the war with almost half dying as prisoners. Perhaps the remaining descendants of those prisoners of war should seek reparations from England.