Biographical Sketch of Beatrice Reynolds Kinkead

Biographical Database of Militant Woman Suffragists, 1913-1920

Biography of Beatrice Reynolds Kinkead, 1874-1947

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By Linda D. Wilson, Independent Historian

Beatrice (Reynolds) Kinkead, an active member of the National Woman's Party (NWP), was born in Upper Lake, Lake County, California, on November 8, 1874. She was one of six children born to physician Robert Gallaher and his wife Maria "Minnie" (Clendonin) Reynolds. After graduating from high school, Beatrice Reynolds attended UC Berkeley, where she attained a bachelor of arts degree in 1895 and a master's of art degree two years later. (1)

While Reynolds attended the University of California, she was active in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and woman's suffrage movement. She taught at Bryn Mawr and Vassar colleges before returning to California to teach Greek and Latin at the Los Angeles High School in 1900. During her teaching career, Kinkead and Vassar professor J. Leverett Moore collaborated on the second edition of Exercises for Translation into Latin Prose that was published in 1903. That same year she resigned from teaching and married James Alan Kinkead of New York. They had four sons, all born in New York. (2)

Between 1910 and 1916, the family lived in Montclair, New Jersey. As an active member of NWP in New Jersey, Kinkead participated in the suffrage picket in front of the White House on July 14, 1917. As a "Silent Sentinel," she and fifteen other women were arrested for obstructing traffic. Those arrested were convicted and given the choice of a $25 fine or sixty days in jail. All chose jail. However, President Woodrow Wilson pardoned them in three days. (3)

Beginning in the late 1920s and continuing into the 1940s, Kinkead actively translated Russian books. She selected the works of two brothers, Mikhail and Marshak Il'in. Respectively, the men were an engineer and a famous poet/storyteller. Kinkead hoped that American readers would embrace the scientific and literary accomplishments of the Soviet Union in order to find a common ground between the two countries so that they would unite in the fight against fascism. After making several trips to Russia, she gave speeches in California during the 1930s regarding the family and education in the Soviet Union. (4)

Kinkead participated in the northern California branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Both she and her husband were members of the Communist Party during the 1940s. Kinkead died at San Mateo, California, on November 11, 1947. She was preceded in death by her husband James Alan Kinkead, who died on October 17, 1942 (5)

SOURCES: Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene, After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010). Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 17 and 20 July 1917. Julia L. Mickenberg, "Suffragettes and Soviets: American Feminists and the Specter of Revolutionary Russia," Journal of American History 100:4 (March 2014). San Francisco Call, 16 May 1895, 22 December 1897, 20 June 1900 and 9 and 29 August 1903. Stanford (California) Daily, 5 April and 12 May 1932. Doris Elizabeth Shepard and Mike Farrelly, Legendary Locals of Montclair, New Jersey (Charleston, SC: Legendary Locals, 2013). Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote (NewSage Press reprint, 1995[1920]). U.S. Congress, Senate, Cong. Rec., 89th Cong., 4 November 1943. Washington Herald (Washington, D.C.), 20 July 1917.

(1) 1880 Federal Census, Gravetty Valley, Lake County, California, accessed on Ancestry.com on January 15, 2018. San Francisco Call, 16 May 1895 and 22 December 1897. Robert Gallaher Reynolds in the Directory of Deceased American Physicians, 1804-1929, accessed on Ancestry.com on January 15, 2018.

(2) San Francisco Call, 20 June 1900 and 9 and 29 August 1903. 1910 Federal Census, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. Program Bryn Mawr College, Academic Year, 1906-07 (John C. Winston Co.: Philadelphia, PA, 1906). 1920 Federal Census, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California. 1930 Federal Census, Fremont, Santa Clara County, California.

(3) Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote (NewSage Press reprint, 1995[1920]), 363. Elizabeth Shepard and Mike Farrelly, Legendary Locals of Montclair, New Jersey (Charleston, SC: Legendary Locals, 2013), 97. Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 17 and 20 July 1917. Washington Herald (Washington, D.C.), 20 July 1917.

(4) Julia L. Mickenberg, "Suffragettes and Soviets: American Feminists and the Specter of Revolutionary Russia," Journal of American History 100:4 (March 2014), 1021-1051. Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene, After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010), 130-131. Stanford (California) Daily, 5 April and 12 May 1932.

(5) California Death Index, 1940-1997 accessed on Ancestry.com and Family Search on January 15, 2018. U.S. Congress, Senate, Cong. Rec., 89th Cong., 4 November 1943.

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