Viewing page 11 of 24

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[strikethrough]] 178 [[/strikethrough]] 279

[[stamp]] FROM THE FLYING PIONEERS BIOGRAPHIES OF HAROLD E. MOREHOUSE [[/stamp]]

KATHERINE STINSON
Early Wright Exhibition Pilot - Instructor 
First Licensed Woman Wright Pilot in the World
Third Licensed Woman Pilot in the United States

[[image]]

Katherine Stinson was born at Fort Payne, [[strikethrough]] Mississippi [[/strikethrough]] Alabama. She attended local schools and developed an early interest in music. She dreamed of a career as an accomplished pianist but was not financially able to have an advanced musical education. She [[strikethrough]] then began to [[/strikethrough]] read about the big prize money [[strikethrough]] early [[/strikethrough]] aviators were making and this seemed to be a way she might earn the means to further her musical education.

She started [[strikethrough]] to [[/strikethrough]] enthusiastically to investigate the possibilities of learning to fly, and made a balloon ascension with Lt. H. E. Honeywell at Kansas City, Missouri, on August 31 [[strikethrough]] st [[/strikethrough]], 1911. That fall she enrolled for a flying course at the Kansas City Flying School which folded up shortly after she became a student, so she went to St. Louis where she had her first plane ride with Tony Jannus in a Benoist plane at Kinloch Field on January 21 [[strikethrough]] st [[/strikethrough]], 1912. She then enrolled as a student but this [[strikethrough]] seemingly [[/strikethrough]] did not work out so she went to Chicago in March to investigate schools there.

A small, frail, girl, there was general doubt [[strikethrough]] of [[/strikethrough]] as to her ability to ever handle a plane. The Mills School rejected her application, but later Max Lillie took her on as a student when he started his spring class at Cicero Field in May. Also in

1