Program

On June 25, 1894, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a young mother of three small children, stood before a crowd of 500 friends, family, suffragists and curious onlookers at the Massachusetts State House. Then she climbed onto a 42-pound Columbia bicycle and 'sailed away like a kite down Beacon Street.'

Fifteen months later one New York newspaper called it 'the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman.'

Riding under the assumed name "Annie Londonderry," Annie turned every Victorian notion of female propriety on its head. Not only did she leave, temporarily, her role of wife and mother, but for most of the journey she rode a man's bicycle attired in a man's riding suit. She earned her way selling photographs of herself, appearing as an attraction in stores, and by turning herself into a mobile billboard, renting space on her body and her bicycle to advertisers eager to benefit from this colorful spectacle on wheels. Annie thus

became one of the most celebrated women of the gay '˜90s. Yet, until now, her remarkable story has been lost to history.

For more than two years, Annie's great-grandnephew, Peter Zheutlin, has painstakingly reconstructed Annie's audacious journey using hundreds of old newspaper accounts and long lost letters, scrapbooks, and photographs.

Now, you are invited to share Annie's improbable and daring '˜round the world journey with Annie's great-grandnephew as your guide. Travel through the 1890s, a time of ragtime jazz, women's liberation, and Wild West outlaws. Join Annie as she fends off bandits in France, dodges bullets on a Chinese battlefield, and trudges across the California desert with a broken down bicycle.

Peter's lively and richly illustrated PowerPoint presentation includes dozens of original images Annie herself used to illustrate lectures she gave about her travels as she crossed the United States in 1895.