Flying may or may not have started with the Wright Brothers in 1903, depending on what book you’re reading. What the Wright Brothers did however was document on glass negatives every attempt and every failure, until they got it right. The proof was on the glass and in moving pictures. These photographs circulated around the U.S. and the world and we were changed forever.

In 1911, Harriet Quimby, a photo-journalist and early screenwriter became the first American woman to get a pilots license. Miss Quimby wrote extensively about her belief that women had a future as pilots and aerial photographers. Flying at the 1912 Harvard-Boston Air Meet with William Willard as her passenger (who incidentally was the father of Charles Willard, who piloted the first flight in Vermont) Quimby and her Bleriot monoplane had a tragic moment. At 1500 feet, the monoplane mysteriously lurched, overturned, and Willard was thrown out of the plane. As the plane shifted with the change of weights, Harriet Quimby also fell out, and both met their deaths on the river’s mud flats. The Bleriot glided down unharmed. Rather than be discouraged, other women were still eager to fly. In 1910 the Wright Brother’s School refused to take women as students, so both young and not so young women either hired private instructors or found more liberal schools.

Vermonters have a long tradition of appreciating aviation. Air shows would attract thousands who would cheer at the courageous feats of both male and female stunt pilots and wing-walkers. Nakki Goranin Collection.

In 1912 Ruth Elder Law, sisters Katherine and Majorie Stinson, and Blanche Stuart Scott broke national and international records flying Wright Curtis Pushers, Wright B’s, Red Devils, and other early air machines. These beautiful young women were the subjects of thousands of photo postcards circulating around the world. Each time they set a new record, another photo postcard was shot and circulated, and provided a lucrative income for them. Airplanes were the theme of both dances and songs. My favorite “rag” was, “She Used To Be A Waitress, Now She’s An Aviatrix.”

In Vermont, the first woman to fly was the mother of Vermont’s aviation pioneer, George Schmit. Annie Schmit flew with George at the 1911 Rutland Fair, as did other friends and paying customers. In the early 1920’s while women were barnstorming and doing acrobatic stunts, such as wing-walking, no records could be found of other women flying in this rural farming state. In the “great” flood of 1927, when the roads throughout the state were washed out, aviators flew out of the dirt runways at the Fort Ethan Allen military base in Colchester to bring food and mail, but again, records are sparse.

In the years 1928-1929, aviation started to be a strong presence in the state. In fact, 1929 was also the year the Ninety-nines, the women’s pilot group, was established at Curtis Field, New York.

This was the same year Vermont began to issue pilot’s licenses (under the Bureau of Motor Vehicles) and one room, one hangar airports were established in Springfield and Burlington.

Lincoln In The Air

In the town of Manchester, one of the most famous inhabitants was Mary Harlan Lincoln, widow of Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s son. Born in 1898, her granddaughter, Mary Lincoln (Peggy) Beckwith, spent much of her childhood at Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln’s Victorian mansion.

Unpretentious and eccentric, Peggy spent her late teens and early 20’s at Provincetown, Rhode Island, involved with painting and photography. With both talent and money easily available to her and the lure of the excitement of both Lindbourgh’s flight to Paris, and later the women pilots Powder Puff Derby, Peggy started taking flight lessons in Washington DC in the late 1920’s. Meanwhile, back in VT, Mrs. George Orvis (Anna Louise), the owner of the famed Equinox Hotel in Manchester, set about putting together a personal landing strip for the hotel. Working with Peggy, they selected a flat piece of grassy land where customers in private biplanes could land. These landings would have to be performed in daylight. A visionary woman, Mrs. Orvis painted on the roof of the hotel in large letters “Manchester VT” with a big arrow pointing to the airfield.

In 1930, Peggy Beckwith felt confident to fly her Gypsy Moth to Hildene, where she had an airstrip in the meadowlands. Flying in men’s aviator pants or denim overalls, she sharply conflicted with the pedigreed social image expected from Abraham Lincoln’s great-granddaughter.

In the late 1930’s, Peggy graduated to a larger plane, a Fleet Model 1 bought directly from the Buffalo New York company. Signing up for more advanced lessons from Lee Bowman at the Bowman Aviation School in Springfield Vermont, she paid to have her own hangar built on the airport grounds. Other local Vermont women somehow pulled the funds together and started to take lessons as well.

In 1931, at the opening of the Ethan Allen Highway, Peggy, along with passenger Ethan Allen III, followed the first cars on the new road in her plane. Soon after, Peggy sold her Fleet plane to Bowman, and moved on to a bigger, faster plane, a Travelair. None of this was making the Lincoln Women happy, especially with articles appearing daily in the newspapers with stories of private planes crashing. Town legend has it that Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln finally bribed Peggy for $10,000 to stop flying. Whatever the reason, Peggy succumbed to family pressure and never marrying, spent the rest of her life involved in ecology, preservation farming, and raising cattle. Wearing her artist’s smock or farmer’s overalls, she often walked among the white heifers grazing leisurely on the front lawn of the Hildene mansion. Annoyed by superficial attention to her Lincoln ancestry, she remained private and enigmatic. At her death, Hildene was left to the Christian Science Church.

Burlington Takes Off

As the young pilot Lee Bowman was working at his aviation school at the Harkness Airport, the big city of the North Country, Burlington, was not out of the loop. In 1920 the designated grassy field outside of town prepared for its first biplane. Most people in Vermont, though unable to afford to fly, still loved to watch airplanes. Air shows, beginning in 1911, would draw from two to four thousand people, no matter what part of the state they were in. The model T’s would line up and the huge crowds were barely contained by the state police. Surprisingly, few photos remain of these events.

With an eye to future commerce, the mayor of Burlington and a few businessmen continued to mow down cornfields, east of the city. The mayor at that time was Mason Beebe, who prior to 1920, had developed airfields for his “Air Service Baseball Team,” dubbed “The only organized flying baseball team in the world.”

By 1929 Lt. Lyle Churchill, who had started the Vermont Airways out of the then wealthy town of Newport, started a very small flying school in Burlington. Due to the still tremendous surplus of planes, parts, and pilots from WW I, it didn’t take much money to set up operations. After a year or so, operations were moved to Plattsburg and back to Newport.

At the one room Burlington airport, Harold and Gracie Pugh took over operations. Harold learned to fly in 1929, got a commercial license in 1931, and by 1932 was responsible for everything, including working as an instructor. The young Gracie Pugh, whose father George Hall initially ran the airport, met the very strong willed and handsome Harold, and her life was never the same again. A match made in pilot heaven, these two people set the course of aviation for Vermont. Hugh strongly encouraged Gracie to become a formal pilot and by 1932 with her learners permit in hand, she was an equal force in running both the Fli-rite Aviation School and the airport, in addition to teaching elementary school for a while in the early 1930’s.

Vermont, as well as the rest of the nation, recognized women as serious pilots. Famous stunt pilots such as Betty Lund and Maude Tait performed air shows here, watched again by thousands of people, each holding their breath.

No one however drew the crowds or adoration like Amelia Earhart.

Amelia Earhart In Vermont

In 1934 to celebrate Amelia’s second anniversary of her solo flight to cross the Atlantic, her manager-husband George Palmer Putnam and the Central Vermont-Boston-Maine Airways participated in both a “Woman’s Day” at the Burlington Airport and “Amelia Earhart Day” in the city. Greeted by two thousand screaming girls and women, this extraordinary woman, for the two days she was in town, worked non-stop. She spoke at two dinners, for a mostly female crowd. Her message was simple and precognizant. Aviation was the future, and women had and could be an equal force in that future. Earhart urged young mothers to take their children up in airplanes and talk positively about the benefits and adventure of the flight. The papers of the time quote her as saying, “By 1936, flying commercially over the Atlantic(would) be commonplace and safe.”

The following day all the city’s high school students met in Memorial Auditorium where Amelia again encouraged them to see aviation as a democratic vocation and lifestyle available to everyone.

That afternoon, despite a light rain, Amelia went up on 17 short flights over Burlington with 158 eager women of all ages. From Girl Scouts to great grandmothers, its impact had to be life changing.
Next Issue: More about Amelia Earhart in Vermont, Gracie Pugh, Emogen Farnsworth, and Shirley Chevalier.

After being in three planes hit by lightening, a transatlantic flight with one engine on fire, and four stormy typhoon flights in Asia, Miss Goranin is rather cautious about flying again.