#Katharine Wright Haskell

[dailyhistoryposts]

The Wright Sister: Katharine Wright Haskell

Katharine Wright Haskell (1874-1929), younger sister to aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Haskell attended Oberlin College, one of the few coeducation institutions, and was the only Wright sibling to earn a college degree. She cared deeply about being financially independent and worked as a Latin and English teacher. Seeing her pay and assignments worse than her male peers inspired a significant feminist value in her.

She was instrumental in the success of Wilbur and Orville's airplane--she took control of the bicycle shop, their finances, and management. She was one of the first women to go up in an airplane.

She travelled with her brothers to France, where she was considered more charming than her brothers and became an international celebrity. France honored her as an Officier de l'Instruction Publique, one of France's highest academic honors.

A determined suffragist, she led her family in marches and traveled to Columbus to lobby Ohio state legislatures, which in 1919 proved successful.

[247reader]

Day 17: Kate Wright!

Katharine “Kate” Wright was the youngest child of Dayton, Ohio’s Wright family, younger sister to Wilbur and Orville (and to Reuchlin and Lorin). Seeking out one of the few independent careers available to a middle-class girl, she became a teacher, but she continued to live in the family home, caring for her father and helping out her brothers in their bicycle shop. She also took an interest in Wilbur and Orville’s eccentric flying machine hobby, helping them on the business end as they tried to market the Wright Flyer. When, in 1908, Orville was gravely injured during a test flight, Kate quit her teaching job to nurse him; he credited her with saving his life. She accompanied her brothers on their tour of Europe - indeed, the more socially-adroit Kate was their spokesperson and essentially their manager. She leveraged her celebrity in support of women’s rights, becoming an outspoken feminist and a leader in the American suffrage movement.

In 1926, Kate married Henry Haskell, a longtime family friend, but Orville, her surviving brother, saw the initially-secret romance as a betrayal. He refused to attend their wedding, and was only reconciled with Kate on her deathbed in 1929. In her lifetime, she was nearly as famous as her brothers, but the rest of the century saw her nearly forgotten. Only in recent years has her legacy been brought back into the spotlight.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

To Katharine!

When Katharine Wright fell in love with Henry Haskell and married him in November 1926, the event was bittersweet. Bitter because the brother, with whom she had shared most of her life and love, declined to attend her wedding, distraught that she had chosen connubial bliss over sisterly devotion. The story is told that Orville Wright refused to speak to his sister for two years until tragedy humbled him.

The man Katharine chose to marry was an Oberlin classmate, a man with a brilliant career with the Kansas City Star.�� Described as having a "high standards of taste and literary merit"  as well as being "politically honest", Henry J. Haskell rose through the ranks of the Star to become one of its owners when he and five others bought the paper for $11,000,000 at the demise of the original founder William Rockhill Nelson in 1915. 

Katharine was Henry's second wife. His first wife, another Oberlin classmate named Isabel Cummings, died in 1923. Sadly, Katharine's marriage to Henry lasted less than four years. In a twist of fate, Henry became ill and was scheduled to have surgery in Minnesota.  Katharine naturally accompanied him to Minnesota only to catch a cold, which later turned into pneumonia with complications. She died shortly afterwards in March 1929.  Henry recovered and would marry for a third time in 1931. However, he immortalized his relationship with Katharine when he commissioned a signor Petrilli to carve a replica of Verrochio's Boy with a Dolphin as a tribute to her. 

The fountain, erected in the summer of 1931, sits near the Oberlin's Allen Memorial Art Museum. It is a perfect tribute to a woman who was instrumental in cementing her brothers' destiny in aviation history, a woman who became Oberlin College's second female member of the Board of Trustees, a woman who was comfortable in the presence of world leaders as much as she was in teaching Latin to children in the Dayton public schools. To Katharine!

For more images of the Katharine Wright Haskell Fountain, visit the Oberlin College Archives’ Campus Views Collection.

[oberlincollegearchives]

Celebrating Ohio Archives Month

Every October, the Society of Ohio Archivists recognizes Archives Month. Ohio Archives Month was created to celebrate and showcase institutions and collections in Ohio, and bring awareness to archival centers and materials.

This year’s theme focuses on Ohio’s and Ohioans’ major role in the development of space travel. In sticking close to this theme, we have decided to highlight a few materials from the Oberlin College Archives that focuses on aviation and space travel.

Materials pictured above:

Apollo manned space rocket 1/40th scale model. The model consists of three separate pieces: the escape rocket, the command module, and the service/stage module attached to the wooden base. The Apollo spacecraft was designed to land the first humans on the moon, which occurred on July 20, 1969 with the Apollo 11. This model came to the College Archives in the Charles A. Mosher Congressional Papers.

Katharine Wright Haskell (A.B. 1898; Oberlin College Trustee) was the sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright, the inventors and flyers of the first airplane. Katharine was instrumental in assisting her brothers with the invention of the airplane. A fountain dedicated to her is located near the Allen Memorial Art Museum.

Orville Wright (Hon. LL.D. 1910) pictured with a wind machine instrument (now located in the College Archives). Orville, along with his brother Wilbur, both received honorary degrees from Oberlin College in 1910. The Wright Laboratory of Physics was named for the Wright Brothers in 1948.

A selection of 37 replicas of the airfoils tested by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright. All pieces include a metal attachment which holds the airfoil to the test apparatus. Not pictured are replicas of a wooden wing rib and two models of airfoils attached to wooden bases. They were exhibited in the Wright Laboratory of Physics until the new Science Center was built in 2002. 

[earhartsease]

Text from Historical Photos of Women's Stories:

Katharine, the Wright sister.

The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, are justifiably famous for their invention of and first successful flight of the airplane, but their sister, Katharine (1874-1929), was an equally important part of the team.

Katharine was the one who paid the bills, made speeches on her brothers’ behalf (they were very reticent and poor public speakers), promoted her brothers and marketed their invention, led tours, met with business contacts and public officials world-wide, managed the family’s bicycle shop, negotiated contracts, nursed her brothers when they were injured, and basically ran their entire business so Wilbur and Orville could get on with what they did best - designing and building flying machines. Oh, and in addition to organizing her brothers’ lives, Katharine also taught high school Latin and organized suffrage marches in her home town of Dayton, Ohio.

Kathrine was the youngest of the five surviving children of Milton and Susan Wright. When Susan died of tuberculosis in 1889, Katharine, the only girl, took over the running of the household. She left for a few years to attend Oberlin College, and she was the only one of the five siblings to earn a degree. After graduation she returned to the family home in Dayton, and took up a position teaching Latin in a local high school.

As her siblings Wilbur and Orville became more involved in designing, building, and testing flying machines, Katharine took on the organizational aspects of their business. Although the two oldest brothers married and left the home, Katharine, Wilbur, and Orville showed no interest in finding spouses. They seemed bound to remain together and let no one else come between them. Wilbur and Orville never married, and Katharine only married when she was 52 years old. Wilbur had already died, and Orville refused to attend her wedding. He did not speak to her again until she was on her deathbed three years later.

Katharine was a champion for women’s rights, and started attending suffrage meetings in Dayton in 1912. In 1914, she arranged a suffrage parade in downtown Dayton that had over 1,300 marchers including her brothers and her father. She served as President of the Young Women’s League for two years and was also a member of the Dayton Women’s Club and the League of Women Voters. Her husband Henry “Harry” Haskell, whom she married in 1926, shared her opinions about women’s rights. In a letter Katharine wrote to Harry in November 1924, she said “I get all ‘het up’ over living forever in a ‘man’s world... but I know that already having the vote has done a lot toward making men take us seriously.”

When Wilbur and Orville perfected their flying machine, they discovered that the invention was just the first step. Many people didn’t believe it even existed. Witnesses were ignored and photographs were declared to be fakes. The French government, however, took it seriously, and in 1909, the brothers dismantled a plane, boxed it up, shipped it to France, and then put it back together. They held public demonstrations, and the people of France and throughout Europe went wild for the new invention. Katharine came into her own, arranging meetings and giving speeches in English and French. The brothers worked on the plane, and she became the publicist, and met with dignitaries at parties. The crowds loved her, and so did the newspapers. When the Wrights returned to America, they found they were celebrities.

Katharine continued to take over more and more of the day-to-day operations and the promotional aspects of the business upon their return. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912, and their father Milton died in 1917, leaving Orville increasingly dependent upon Katharine.

Katharine stayed involved in Dayton’s women’s groups and was elected to the Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees. She eventually married in 1926, but died only three years later, of pneumonia, in 1929. Orville lived until 1948, and donated $300,000 (worth several million in today’s money) in honor of his sister, to her Alma Mater, Oberlin.

[clarencewardartlibrary]

“Originally posted Feb. 12, 2017″

Way Opens

This post is about, not the art library, but everything you might run into on the way in. There’s a lot to see, even though some of the monuments here were actually built well before the Venturi Wing of the museum, which houses the Art Library.

“This gateway commemorates the entrance of women into college education,” reads the Coeducational Centennial Memorial Gateway, also called the Women’s Gate for short. It was built in 1937 to commemorate the year (1837) that Oberlin became the first college in America to admit women into an undergraduate program (but not the same program as was offered to Oberlin’s male students). The back of the pillar bears the names of the four women who started school that year: Mary Hosford, Mary Fletcher Kellogg, Elizabeth Smith Prall, and Caroline Mary Rudd. Kellogg did not graduate but did later marry James Fairchild, third president of Oberlin. This monument is one of two places where those names are prominent on campus: the four wings of South Hall are named for these four women.

The fountain has text unobtrusively carved on the second-lowest rung: “Katharine Wright Haskell 1874-1929.″ Katharine Wright, sister of Orville and Wilbur, graduated in 1989. While the brothers were working on plane designs, Katharine ran the house and took care of them. Wright Laboratory of Physics also bears their name. Katharine met her future husband Harry Haskell at Oberlin, which is why, after she died, he gave money and materials for this fountain to be built in Oberlin in her memory. The figure on top (a boy playing with a not-to-scale dolphin) is a replica of a sculpture by the 15th-century Florentine artist Andrea del Verrocchio. The fountain was restored in 2007.

The aromatic herb garden was planted in 1989. As the plaque says, the money for the garden was given by the class of 1939 at their 50th reunion in 1989. Most of the herbs, like sage and thyme, are known for their culinary use, but some, like yarrow and St. John’s wort, are medicinal.

83 North Main Street, Oberlin, OH, 44074. 440-775-8635

#oberlin #oberlin college #oberlin college libraries #art library #monuments #Katharine Wright #Andrea del Verrocchio #mary hosford #mary fletcher kellogg #elizabeth smith prall #caroline mary rudd

[miss-nerd-alert]

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, allow me to present my ancestor, Katharine Wright

The younger sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright, both her brothers credited her as a big help in creating their flying machine. Although she didn’t have a hand in the mechanics of their invention, she offered moral support, handled the public, and helped finance their work.

Katharine was the only member of the family to graduate from college, and used the money she made as a teacher to help fund Orville and Wilbur’s work. She also ran their bicycle shop, handled their correspondence, and acted as the face of the Wright family when they showcased their work.

Since both her brothers were notoriously shy, Katharine was the one to meet with political and social figures when the Wrights toured Europe to showcase their aeroplane. She even learned French so she could better communicate with the dignitaries she was meeting. When she first met King Alphonso XIII of Spain, she’d practiced curtseys with an aristocrat’s wife, only to completely forget once the king actually arrived. She greeted him with a handshake and a smile; the king was apparently won over immediately.

Besides the king of Spain, Katharine also met French Prime Minister Georges Clémeceau, 1st Viscount of Northcliffe Alfred Harmsworth, and Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. She was the third woman in history to fly an airplane, right behind Teresa Peltier and Edith Berg, two socialites her brothers took flying. She was also credited (rather innaccurately) with the rise in popularity of the hobble skirt, since she had to tie her skirt around her legs when she’d fly.

Katharine was awarded the Legion d’honneur alongside her brothers when they left Europe, and is still one of only a handful of American women to do so. Once back in the US, Katharine was invited to the White House with her brothers to meet President Taft, and became an officer of the Wright Company in 1912.

She married her college sweetheart Henry Joseph Haskell on Novermber 20th, 1926, and died of pneumonia on March 3rd, 1929 at age 54.

[lovelyloveday]

Hello, Lovelies!  An epistolary novel of historical fiction that imagines the life of Katharine Wright and her relationship with her famous brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright. - The Wright Sister by Patty Dann available now https://bit.ly/3iKd8WP 

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the world's first airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, establishing the Wright Brothers as world-renowned pioneers of flight. Known to far fewer people was their whip-smart and well-educated sister Katharine, a suffragette and early feminist. After Wilbur passed away, Katharine lived with and took care of her increasingly reclusive brother Orville, who often turned to his more confident and supportive sister to help him through fame and fortune. But when Katharine became engaged to their mutual friend, Harry Haskell, Orville felt abandoned and betrayed. He smashed a pitcher of flowers against a wall and refused to attend the wedding or speak to Katharine or Harry. As the years went on, the siblings grew further and further apart. In The Wright Sister, Patty Dann wonderfully imagines the blossoming of Katharine, revealed in her "Marriage Diary"--in which she emerges as a frank, vibrant, intellectually and socially engaged, sexually active woman coming into her own--and her one-sided correspondence with her estranged brother as she hopes to repair their fractured relationship. Even though she pictures "Orv" throwing her letters away, Katharine cannot contain her joie de vivre, her love of married life, her strong advocacy of the suffragette cause, or her abiding affection for her stubborn sibling as she fondly recalls their shared life. An inspiring and poignant chronicle of feminism, family, and forgiveness, The Wright Sister is an unforgettable portrait of a woman, a sister of inventors, who found a way to reinvent herself. #historicalfiction #thewrightbrothers #thewrightsister #pattydann  @harpercollins  @HarperPerennial #bookstagram #bookblog #books #booklover #readersofig #booksofig #lovelyloveday #lovelylovedayblog 

[oberlincollegelibraries]

#WCW: Katharine Wright Haskell

Above photo: Infographic depicting the information about Katharine Wright Haskell written in this post.

Katharine Wright Haskell, OC Class of 1898

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Wright Haskell may be best known as the younger sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright, but she also accomplished many things independently. 

Born August 19, 1874; Died March 3, 1929

A.B., Oberlin College, 1898

The only member of the famous Wright siblings to earn a college degree

Taught Latin and English at the Dayton Steele High School

Managed the Wright Cycle Co. bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio

Received the Legion d’honneur, the highest French order of merit for military and civic achievements

MAJOR MILESTONES

1909- Accompanied her brothers to France to act as a translator and frequently represented them at public events

1914- Organized a march for women’s suffrage in Dayton, Ohio, which drew 1,300 supporters

1924- Became one of the first women to serve on Oberlin College’s board of trustees

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Suffrage Saturday: Women in Flight

This weekend we are highlighting some of the amazing women who have touched the world of air and space travel. Some names will be familiar, while others might be new. Hopefully each of these women will see the recognition they deserve moving forward. Below we highlight some of the fearless, female high-fliers you can read up on while you are at home.

To get started, visit the Oberlin College Libraries homepage and use the Summon search bar to find materials about women in flight. You can search by their names or by keywords. We suggest looking up “women in flight,” “women in space,” “women air pilots”, and “ women mathematicians.” Of course, there are many other keyword searches you can do, but that should get you started!

If you’re having trouble locating material, remember you can always get online help from one of our knowledgeable librarians. Just be sure you are signed into our Proxy Server to access OCL materials from home.

Clockwise from top left: Katharine Wright Haskell, Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, Sally Ride, Katherine Johnson, and Harriet Quimby

Oberlin’s own Katharine Wright Haskell, 1874-1929 (Class of 1898), was the younger sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright. While, Haskell did not work directly on her famous brothers’ Flyer, she contributed in ways that were crucial to the Wright Brother’s success. Haskell managed their bike shop in Dayton, which funded their endeavors, learned French and accompanied them to Europe to act as a translator, cared for Orville after he was injured in a test flight, and served as an officer in the Wright Company after Wilbur passed away.

Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937, might be our most famous female aviator- and for good reason! Some of the many “firsts” Earhart achieved were: first woman to fly a transatlantic flight, first woman to fly a solo transatlantic flight, first woman to make a solo US coast-to-coast flight, first person to fly solo from Oakland, California to Honolulu, first person to fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and first person to fly from the Red Sea to India. Now that’s a lot of firsts!

Harriet Quimby, 1875-1912, might be an unfamiliar name to most of us, but without her, none of the other women on this list would be here. That is because Quimby was the first woman ever to earn a U.S. pilot’s certificate in 1911. She is also the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

Bessie Coleman, 1892-1926, grew up during a time when the United States would admit neither women nor African Americans into flight schools, but that didn’t stop Coleman. She learned French and moved to Le Crotoy, France so she could learn to fly. Coleman became both the first black woman and first Native American to earn an aviation pilot's license and the first black person and first Native American to earn an international aviation license in 1921.

Due to the release of the book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly (and the subsequent movie), Katherine Johnson, 1918-2020 is finally getting some of the recognition she deserves. Johnson worked as a mathematician for NACA and NASA for over thirty years. Without her, as well as other African American female computers (a job title once used to describe a person who computes, or performs mathematical calculations) like Dorothy Vaughan, and  Mary Jackson, the Mercury Project and Apollo Missions would have never taken place.

And finally, we may all know that Sally Ride, 1951-2012 was the first American woman to go to space, but she also achieved much more. Ride, who held a Ph.D. in physics was among the first six women accepted into the astronaut corps and she served on the investigations boards for both the Columbia and Challenger accidents.

[clarencewardartlibrary]

Way Opens

This post is about, not the art library, but everything you might run into on the way in. There’s a lot to see, even though some of the monuments here were actually built well before the Venturi Wing of the museum, which houses the Art Library.

“This gateway commemorates the entrance of women into college education,” reads the Coeducational Centennial Memorial Gateway, also called the Women’s Gate for short. It was built in 1937 to commemorate the year (1837) that Oberlin became the first college in America to admit women into an undergraduate program (but not the same program as was offered to Oberlin’s male students). The back of the pillar bears the names of the four women who started school that year: Mary Hosford, Mary Fletcher Kellogg, Elizabeth Smith Prall, and Caroline Mary Rudd. Kellogg did not graduate but did later marry James Fairchild, third president of Oberlin. This monument is one of two places where those names are prominent on campus: the four wings of South Hall are named for these four women.

The fountain has text unobtrusively carved on the second-lowest rung: “Katharine Wright Haskell 1874-1929.″ Katharine Wright, sister of Orville and Wilbur, graduated in 1989. While the brothers were working on plane designs, Katharine ran the house and took care of them. Wright Laboratory of Physics also bears their name. Katharine met her future husband Harry Haskell at Oberlin, which is why, after she died, he gave money and materials for this fountain to be built in Oberlin in her memory. The figure on top (a boy playing with a not-to-scale dolphin) is a replica of a sculpture by the 15th-century Florentine artist Andrea del Verrocchio. The fountain was restored in 2007.

The aromatic herb garden was planted in 1989. As the plaque says, the money for the garden was given by the class of 1939 at their 50th reunion in 1989. Most of the herbs, like sage and thyme, are known for their culinary use, but some, like yarrow and St. John’s wort, are medicinal.