Viewing page 2 of 71

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[newspaper clipping]]

ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE, SUNDAY, JUL [[cutoff]]

First Woman Coast-to-Coast Motorist Returns to Rocheser Still Untamed 'Tomboy' Who Made Cops Gasp by Bike Stunts

Blanche Stuart Scott Also Second of Sex to Fly Alone in Airplane

Writer of Scripts for Films, Radio Still Seeks New Worlds to Conquer 

[[Image]]
[[caption]] Blanche Stuart Scott, first woman stunt pilot in United States and a "tourist" when cars were new, with her dog Congo. [[/caption]]

By Henry W. Clune

When she was a little girl around Rochester, Blanche Stuart Scott was the neighborhood tomboy. Her mother tried to make a lady out of her, but made the mistake of buying her a bicycle. Blanche took the thing the first day it was given to her and rode it down the front steps. The bicycle was a week in the repair shop. When it was returned to her, she rode it, no hands and no feet, down a steep hill in Seneca Park, and a policeman who caught her when her flight was spent told her if she repeated the stunt he'd turn her over his knee and spank her.

Later Blanche's mother tried other tactics with the idea of thoroughly feminizing her daughter. She enrolled her first in the exclusive Misses Nichols Day School for Young Ladies in Fitzhugh Street, and after a few terms there Blanche matriculated successfully in two finishing schools down east. She left the last one with the idea she would like to be an automobile saleswoman. With Blanche, an idea was a decision. She did become a saleswoman in New York for the old Mitchell automobile. The next year she achieved international fame by being the first woman to drive a motor car from coast to coast.

On a Front Porch

Blanche Stuart Scott is back in town again, living with her mother, Mrs. N.W. Bitz at 163 Hobart Street. She is heavier, a little touched by the years, but still filled with a zest for living; still on the search for new worlds to conquer. She came back from her last place of residence, Hollywood, because of her mother's illness.

"I'm on a front porch in Hobart Street, Rochester, N.Y.," she said yesterday. "Occupation, well--," Miss Scott's words trailed off in a short laugh.

After a moment's reflection, she remarked she had been born 20 years before her time. Her day was the day before the one-piece bathing suits, women in sport, a woman flying the North Atlantic, and equal suffrage. 

But she must have had a lot of fun, at that; and despite the so-called, but never respected, feminine inhibitions of her younger days.

Motor Trip 'Adventure'

The trip from New York to San Francisco by motor, which Miss Scott made in 1910, was much more of an adventure than the average motorist of today could conceive. No long, rolling ribbons of asphalt traversed this land of the free and home of the brave in those days. The Western dessert was an uncharted area of deep sand. "Once," said Miss Scott, "I got lost in that darned hot place, and had to drink water from my radiator. But I had a lot of fun."

She was contacted to make the trip by the Overland Company, one of whose cars she drove. It was a small, one-cylinder affair, and in preparation for her trip, Miss Scott spent several weeks in the Toledo plant of the company learning all about engines and the easiest way to change a tire. You had to remove a rim, to change a tire in those days; Miss Scott said she removed many.

"But I never took a tow," she boasted proudly. "I'd have pushed the thing, rather than been pulled. And garages were few and far between, and filling stations-say! Lots of times I drove that car the last few miles of a day's trip solely on its reputation."

The coast-to-coast trip was not done with the idea of breaking records. It was an advertising stunt and Miss Scott strayed far and wide from a direct course in order to meet and exhibit before the Overland dealers. She drove $6,800 miles between New York and San Francisco. The direct route is approximately 3,500 miles.

Drivers Olfield's Racer

On the way over, she stopped at Indianapolis for the first race meeting on the famous speedway of that city. There she gave an exhibition around the two-and-a-half mile track, driving Barney Oldfield's Green Dragon two laps of the course at an average speed of 84 miles an hour. "That may be crawling now, but in those days we thought it was flying," she said.

Back in New York after her coast-to-coast jaunt, someone asked Miss Scott why she didn't try flying.

"Sure," she said. "Where can I do it?"

The man who had opened the subject said he would arrange the matter, and two days later Miss Scott had a contract with Glenn Curtiss, famous pioneer of aviation, and she repaired immediately to Mr. Curtiss' flying field at Hammondsport.

Flying machines in those days were largely made of bamboo fishing rods and tent canvas. In two days Miss Scott was making short flights over the Curtiss field. But they had the throttle of her plane wired so she couldn't do much more than "cut the grass." She learned how to cut the throttle, and then she soared, arising 100 feet in the air. After that there was no holding her on the ground.

Takes to Aviation

She thought for years she was the first woman to make a regular flight, and she was so advertised. Later she learned another woman had beaten her to this honor by two days. But she was, actually, the first woman to give a public exhibition in an airplane; and after that debut, she was constantly in the air until 1916 when the big money in "circus" flying at the fairs and carnivals was a thing of the past. 

She flew everything and flew everywhere. She had a cross-country flight over Long Island, and flights in towns and cities from coast to coast. She got good money, $5,000 a week sometimes and had what was left for herself after her managers and assistants had taken their substantial cuts. Charles Day was once her mechanic. 

"A couple of years ago I was crossing Fifth Avenue in New York on foot," said Miss Scott with a wry smile. "In the middle of the street I was forced to dodge a Rolls-Royce. The man in the rear seat was Charlie Day, now a big man in aviation. That's irony, eh?" 

Glenn Martin, who now makes the Martin bombers for the government, was once one of her flying companions; as were Lincoln Beachey and Captain Baldwin, both famous pioneers. But most of her old associates are dead. Those old days were hazardous ones. Ninety-eight per cent of the flyers were killed. Miss Scott herself has suffered 58 broken bones in crackups.

Twice Married

At points along her adventurous career, she married. She married twice. "Both husbands," she said, "were nice men. I have no complaint about either of them. But they wanted domestic wives. I couldn't stay in a birdcage."

They were wealthy men, too. The second husband bought a motion picture company for Miss Scott, and she ran this for a couple of years. Then she had a three-year fling in vaudeville. Later the movies called her again; she made a few flying pictures, notable the "Aviator's Bride," and then got a job in Hollywood writing scripts. Until she returned to Rochester, she was writing radio scripts and playing leads for station KFI, the National Broadcasting station in Los Angeles.

Miss Scott would like to get off the front porch of her mother's Hobart Street home, and go back to Hollywood. For the moment, she said yesterday, "there is nothing doing." She had plans, though. She wants to write magazine fiction, and she is working to that end now. She even showed the reporter her typewriter.

In the heyday of her career, Miss Scott knew almost all the celebrities. She even lunched, one noon, with the late Theodore Roosevelt, when he was President of the United States. And as for governors, mayors, prize fighters, aviators, and what have you?-she knew them by the score.

A very interesting woman, Miss Scott. On or off her Hobart Street front porch!

[[advertisement]]
Cut 50% to 75% off your Automatic HOT WATER BILLS!
[[image - cartoon drawing of man cutting his water bill with scissors]]
[[/advertisement]]