I especially love a story that combines my love of cycling, my fascination with social history, and my interest in the female suffrage movement, so Elsa Von Blumen gets my attention. I have to thank Karen Lankeshofer from Rochester in the US, where Von Blumen hails from, for getting in touch with me to highlight Von Blumen’s achievement.
I wrote a little about Von Blumen many years ago when I came across an excellent book called Wheels of Change by Sue Macy. Von Blumen is one of the women highlighted in the book and I was intrigued by her exploits as well as the many trailblazing female cyclists.
So, I borrow from Karen Lankeshofer’s article about Von Blumen to share her story. Karen has shared a presentation about Von Blumen on YouTube that you can watch if you’d like to know more.
Pioneering female athlete Elsa Von Blumen was a professional bike racer in the 1880s. Her real name was Caroline Kiner and later Caroline Roosevelt after she married Isaac Roosevelt. She also had a brief early marriage to Emery E. Beardsley who was granted a divorce.
Born in Kansas on 6 October 1859, she began her career in her hometown of Rochester, New York, where she started competing as a ‘pedestrienne’ in the very popular sport of race-walking. (as a strange…
