It would be 72 years before that uprising began in earnest, and yet another 72 years until women actually achieved legal parity at the polls. The Western and Central New York region includes locations pivotal to that fight, and as we commemorate 100 years of women’s suffrage, consider a road trip to these places where (not always well-behaved) women certainly made “herstory.”

Just inside the Visitor Center of Seneca Falls’ Women’s Rights National Historical Park is a cluster of statues of suffrage supporters (of both sexes) who attended the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed the Declaration of Sentiments, which expanded on the Declaration of Independence’s familiar phrase.

The park is going all out for this year’s annual Convention Days (July 17-19). Friday’s welcoming ceremony speaker will be Coline Jenkins, great-great-granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The “rooms where it happened” – the Stanton and M’Clintock Houses and the Wesleyan Chapel, as well as the Visitor Center – will be open for tours, and a slew of special programs are on tap. Andrea DeKoter, superintendent of the park (and also of Auburn’s Harriet Tubman National Historical Park), says those include talks by expert authors and historians and by people portraying historic figures such as Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

One topic that organizers won’t shy away from is the racial conflict within the women’s suffrage campaign. Before ratification of the 15th Amendment granting African American men the vote, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and others were divided about supporting the amendment. Some felt black men shouldn’t attain that right before white women. Stanton, Anthony, and others who felt that way formed a new group, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Others formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. Many black women established their own alliances devoted specifically to universal enfranchisement.

The Girl Scouts also will be part of Convention Days in a partnership between the organization and the National Park Service, DeKoter says. Scouts can earn a limited-edition patch by learning more about the 19th Amendment’s significance and its relevance to civic engagement and equal rights.

During Equality Weekend (August 22-23), many of the same presenters will return, in addition to the great-great-granddaughter of Maggie Walker, the African American businesswoman who became the first black woman to run for state office in Virginia. August 26 is Equality Day, the date in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was officially certified, and the park will hold a naturalization program in the morning. Later in the day, DeKoter promises an exciting program in conjunction with another federal agency, details of which will be posted on the website in early summer. The Buffalo Opera will perform the Anthonythemed opera, “The Mother of Us All,” on September 19 to round out the centennial observances (nps.gov/wori). The Seneca Falls Historical Society will also hold suffrage-related events this year. First is a two-part program on climate scientist (and Declaration of  Sentiments signatory) Eunice Foote on June 15 and 16. During Convention Days, “Forward Into Light: The American Women’s Suffrage Movement in New York State in Song & Story” will be presented at the Mynderse Academy Theater on July 18. Four 90-minute “Ride the Rail with Suffragists” events take place on July 19. Passengers will join Stanton, Tubman or Amelia Bloomer on a train trip across Cayuga Lake from Seneca Falls to Auburn (sfhistoricalsociety.org).

Another (and not as well-known) convention was held just three weeks later than the one in Seneca Falls, this time in Rochester and chaired by resident Abigail Bush. Another local with the more familiar name of “Anthony” did not attend, because she was teaching school in Canajoharie and focused on abolition and temperance matters. But according to Victoria Brzustowicz at Rochester’s National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, Anthony soon came to realize that “all these other human rights weren’t going to get anywhere if women couldn’t vote.” “Men, Their Rights And Nothing More: Women, their Rights And Nothing Less” became the motto of the NWSA’s weekly newspaper.

In time, Anthony moved into a home at 17 Madison Street, next door to her sister Mary, who toiled in the shadow of her famous sibling on the same issues. Mary’s house is the museum’s visitor center, the recommended first stop before undertaking a docent-led tour of Anthony’s modest residence. But it’s not the house itself that’s important, says Brzustowicz. “It’s a prop for telling the story of Susan B. Anthony and the men and women she worked with, and their fight for human rights.”

For a more immersive experience, Brzustowicz suggests the Monday lecture series and the family-friendly “Votercade” events held around the Finger Lakes through August. “It’s a motorcade of vintage cars [with] street theater, interactive displays and reenactors,” she says, all centered around voting rights. The celebration culminates with Rochester’s Suffrage City Parade on September 12 (susanb.org).

Taking a road trip? Make sure your AAA membership level has the towing mile coverage you need.