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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
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Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
Any field that men entered, women were soon to follow and aviation was no different. Women like Mathilde Moisant, Blanche Scott, Ruth Law, Katherine Stinson, and Laura Bromwell pioneered the field for so many women to come. Exciting, record-breaking, and notably beautiful, these women competed to be the best of the best, right alongside their male counterparts. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| July 24, 1911 | Mathilde Moisant begins working toward her pilot’s license, even after the death of her brother by flying. She later becomes the second woman in America to earn a license after Harriet Quimby. |
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| July 26, 1911 | Blanche Scott is the first woman in America to fly cross-country. |
| January 19, 1912 | Blanche Scott calls Harriet Quimby and Mathilda Moisant “grass-cutters”, a harsh insult in early flying. |
| December 1, 1912 | Mathilde Moisant is accredited for being the first to evade police in an airplane. |
| June 13, 1915 | Katherine Stinson plans trip from New York to the Panama Exposition in San Francisco. |
| September 1, 1915 | Still a teenager, Ruth Law is a stunt pilot. |
| November 21, 1916 | Ruth Law makes three new records in a flight from Chicago to New York. |
| December 12, 1917 | Establishing a new non-stop distance record, Katherine Stinson flies from San Diego to San Francisco. |
| November 14, 1919 | Laura Bromwell is the first female to earn her license after the First World War. |
| May 30, 1921 | Breaking her own record, Laura Bromwell loops the loop 199 times. |
