Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Anita King (1884-1963) was a silent-film star who achieved an additional measure of fame for establishing a transportation record. In 1915, King – at the time a Famous Players Film Company actress whose first film had been the Cecil B. De Mille western “The Virginian” – became the first woman to make a transcontinental solo... Continue Reading →
Ellen Church (1904-1965) was the first female flight attendant. The Iowa-born Church was a registered nurse and she also had a pilot’s license. While Boeing Air Transport (predecessor to United Airlines) would not give her a job as a pilot, it did hire her to serve as a flight attendant for the company’s planes. Church... Continue Reading →
During the late 19th century, Katherine T. “Kittie” Knox was a transportation pioneer who bravely confronted the era’s gender and racial barriers. Knox, who was born in 1874 to a white mother and African-American father, earned a living as a seamstress but found her passion in bicycling. Knox became a member of the Riverside Cycling... Continue Reading →
Olive Dennis (1885-1957) was an innovative and influential civil engineer in the U.S. railroad industry at a time when technical opportunities for women in that transportation sector were few and far between. Dennis, who was born in the Pennsylvania community of Thurlow and moved to Baltimore with her family when she was six, became only... Continue Reading →
By the late 1870s, more women than ever before were taking part in the then-popular pedestrian races in the United States. Several of the women participating in the sport achieved widespread fame and impressive records, but it was Amy Howard of Brooklyn, New York, who stood out as the era’s foremost and undisputed female walking... Continue Reading →
In 1922, Helen Mary Schultz of Iowa launched the first woman-owned bus line. Her enterprise, Red Ball Transportation Company, came into existence at a time when bus services were steadily growing as a means of mobility in the United States. Schultz, while working in various temporary jobs in California and Minnesota, closely observed motorized bus... Continue Reading →
Martha J. Coston made an important contribution to transportation by perfecting and bringing to market a system of maritime signal flares. The Baltimore native was married to Benjamin Franklin Coston, an aspiring inventor who experimented with color-coded night signals as an effective means for ships to communicate with each other and with people on shore.... Continue Reading →
Mary Myers (1849-1932) was a Boston-born professional balloonist (best known as Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut) and female aviation pioneer. She was married to aeronautical engineer Carl Edgar Myers, and together they devoted a great deal of their energies and expertise to the design and use of passenger balloons. On Independence Day in 1880, Mary became... Continue Reading →
Luella Bates of Wisconsin played an influential role in the history of trucks during a time when those vehicles – still in an early stage of development and use in the United States – were widely seen as contraptions that should be operated only by men. “Be careful what you say about truck-drivers in general,... Continue Reading →
On January 1, 1915, Wilma K. Russey became a high-profile transportation pioneer by launching her career as New York City’s first female taxi driver. “New York’s First Feminine Chauffeur Starts Business on New Year’s Day,” proclaimed a headline in the next day’s edition of the New York Times. Russey, who had been employed for more... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 