Edith Ogilby Berg (born c.1868 - 1949) was the first American woman passenger on a controlled airplane flight, flown by Wilbur Wright in September 1908 and is considered a key influence in the hobble skirt as a fashion trend. For some years she was married to Hart O. Berg, who represented the Wright Brothers' business interests in Europe.
Edith Ogilby was born in California. She was a daughter of actress Louise Paullin and Robert Edwin Ogilby, who had immigrated from Britain or Ireland to California in the Gold Rush of 1849, then became a professor of drawing at the University of California-Berkeley. [2] [3] Her grandfather was Irish-born British military officer Sir David Ogilby.
Edith married Charles Bryant Titcomb in 1887 at age 19. [4] They had a daughter, Grace Titcomb. The couple divorced in 1889.
She became an actress under the stage name Edith Paullin, adopting her mother's maiden name. She appeared in some of the same productions as her second husband, the actor and producer Hubert Druce. While married to Hubert, Edith went by Edith Alice Druce until they divorced in January 1905. [5]
Edith married Hart O. Berg in 1906 and thus met the Wright brothers. Wilbur Wright described her as “a jolly woman and very intelligent”, and his sister Katharine said Edith was "about the best dressed woman I ever saw”. [6] [7]
She saw Wilbur demonstrate the Wright Flyer airplane at Le Mans, France, and asked Wilbur for a ride in it. He agreed, and on 7 October 1908 Berg rode as his passenger in a two-minute flight at nearby Auvours, France, thus becoming the first American woman to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft. [8]
On the aircraft, she tied a rope around her skirt at her ankles to keep it from blowing in the wind during the flight. A French fashion designer watching the flight noticed her walk away from the aircraft with her skirt still tied. This image is said to have influenced the subsequent hobble skirt fashion of the early 20th century. [9]
Edith had another family connection to aviation. In 1905, her daughter Grace had married Paris lawyer Paul Foy. Foy conducted the first prosecution for “furious driving in the air” in October 1909, following the crash of a Blériot monoplane into a crowd of spectators, several of whom were injured, during a display at Port-Aviation in Viry-Chatillon. [10]
Edith and Hart Berg divorced in 1922. She then used the name Edith Ogilby Titmouse Druse. She was left with $5 of inheritance from her wealthy father, with her two sisters receiving sums in the thousands. [11] She lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. [12] She died in August 1949 in San Francisco. [13]
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. In 1904 the Wright brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, which made longer-duration flights including the first circle, followed in 1905 by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1908:
A hobble skirt was a skirt with a narrow enough hem to significantly impede the wearer's stride. It was called a "hobble skirt" because it seemed to hobble any woman as she walked. Hobble skirts were a short-lived fashion trend that peaked between 1908 and 1914.
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Edith Rockefeller McCormick was an American socialite, daughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.
Aida de Acosta Root Breckinridge was an American socialite and aviator. She was the first woman to fly a powered aircraft solo. In 1903, while in Paris with her mother, she caught her first glimpse of dirigibles. She then proceeded to take only three flight lessons, before taking to the sky by herself.
Katharine Wright Haskell was an American teacher, suffragist, and the younger sister of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. She worked closely with her brothers, managing their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, when they were away; acting as their right-hand woman and general factotum in Europe; assisting with their voluminous correspondence and business affairs; and providing a sounding board for their far-ranging ideas. She pursued a professional career as a high school teacher in Dayton, at a time when few middle-class American women worked outside the home, and went on to become an international celebrity in her own right. A significant figure in the early-twentieth-century women's movement, she worked actively on behalf of woman suffrage in Ohio and served as the third female trustee of Oberlin College.
Charles, Count de Lambert was an early European aviator.
Astrid Allwyn was an American stage and film actress.
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Willa Beatrice Brown was an American aviator, lobbyist, teacher, and civil rights activist. She was the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license in the United States, the first African American woman to run for the United States Congress, first African American officer in the Civil Air Patrol, and first woman in the U.S. to have both a pilot's license and an aircraft mechanic's license.
Dorothy Rice Sims was an American sportswoman, aviator, bridge player, artist, and journalist.
Anna Blount was an American physician from Chicago, and Oak Park. She was awarded Doctor of Medicine June 17, 1897 by Northwestern University. She volunteered her medical services at Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago that was founded in 1889. She encouraged other women to become physicians and was the president of the National Medical Women's Association.
Leda Richberg-Hornsby was an American pilot and suffragist. She was the first female graduate of the Wright Flying School in Dayton, Ohio, and the eighth woman in the United States to receive a pilot's license.
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Louise Paullin, sometimes seen as Louisa Paullin, was an American stage actress.
Maxine Dunlap Bennett, was an American aviator. She was the first licensed woman glider pilot and first woman glider club president in the United States. She flew her record-setting glider rating qualification flight over the sand dunes of Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California, on April 28, 1929, for a distance of 990 ft (300 m) and a flight duration of 50 seconds, exceeding the then-required minimum of 30 seconds, to obtain her Glider flying certificate.
Sir David Ogilby (?1755-1834) was an Irish-born officer in the East India Company's Madras Army who was knighted for his service in the Anglo-Mysore Wars.
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Hubert Druce was an English actor and producer involved with English and American theater for over forty years.