Blanche Stuart Scott
First Female American Aviator
1884 – 1970 A.D.
When we hear the word “aviatrix” or female pilot from the early days of powered flight, we might first think of someone like Amelia Earhart whose trans-oceanic and around the world flights in the 1920s and 1930s, certainly made her a pioneer in the field. But actually Earhart was not the first American woman pilot, because that honor belongs to Blanche Stuart Scott. She became the first American woman to fly a plane—eighteen years before Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic.
A pioneer in early automobiling as well as aviation, Scott (known as “Betty”) was born in April, 1884 in Rochester New York, the daughter of a patent medicine manufacturer. At the time when young ladies were supposed to be “ladylike” young Miss Scott was the exact opposite. In short, she was a proverbial “tomboy” who preferred dynamic activism to trying to be demure.
Scott’s sense of adventure was demonstrated early when she became interested in the new automobile her father had purchased. At age 13 she began driving it, tooling around Rochester so energetically, that the city council sought to have her banned from the streets.
This interest increased and culminated in 1910 when she set off to become the second woman to drive an auto across the country. Sponsored by the Willys-Overland company and, in an auto named “Lady Overland” with a reporter as a passenger, Miss Scott set out in May and arrived in San Francisco in late July. Soon after she left a New York Times account put it this way: “Miss Scott, with Miss Phillips as only companion, starts on a long trip with the object of demonstrating the possibility of a woman driving a motor car across the country and making all the necessary repairs en-route.”
It was on this trip that she got her first glimpse of an airplane. She later recalled, “I thought these people flying were idiots, not realizing I’d be doing the same thing three weeks later.”
Publicity about her automobile jaunt caught the attention of a member of the exhibition flying team operated by Glenn Curtiss, a pioneer aviator of the time. When it was suggested that Miss Scott learn to fly she was enthusiastic, though Curtiss himself was not. Though at first he was hesitant because of adverse publicity at teaching a young woman, he finally agreed.
At the time, flight instructors did not take their students up into the air to teach them, so Scott’s lessons began with her in a one-seater plane while Curtiss remained outside. Scott, who wore bloomers stuffed with three petticoats, later described how she sat in what she called “an undertaker’s chair” and in front of “a motor that sounded like a whirling bolt of a dishpan. “She learned to navigate the plane by taxing up and down the field. Still anxious about his new student, Curtiss put a wood block behind the throttle pedal so she couldn’t get up enough speed to become airborne.
Finally in September, 1910 while Miss Scott was in the plane on the field, she became the first American woman to fly when a gust of wind caught up the plane and lifted it to forty feet. Later she remembered: “I got down all right. After that, I wasn’t going to stay on the ground anymore, and I never did.”
One time in October, 1910 when Miss Stuart debuted as a professional pilot with an exhibition in Fort Wayne, Indiana she encountered interesting conditions at what appeared to be an impromptu landing field. It seems that this was actually a racetrack that had been dug up and flattened and with such a rough surface Miss Scott was encouraged to not try to take off. However, she insisted and, as one source put it, “After enduring bumps and jolts, she managed to take off, flew eight revolutions around the grounds and landed safely.”
During this time she had acquired the nickname “Tomboy of the Air,” a label that was possibly self satisfying. She became a stunt pilot flying upside down and performing “Death dives” plunging from 4000 feet and pulling up 200 feet from the ground.
She also encountered a challenge when she could not fly in certain exhibitions because she did not have a pilot’s license provided by a certain organization. So to seek new opportunities in 1912 she traveled to California where she became associated with aircraft designer Glenn Martin. It was this connection that earned her the designation as a female test pilot. Then while appearing in other aerial events sponsored by Martin’s Organization, in July, 1912 she witnessed an airplane crash that killed another woman aviator. Though the event was unnerving and shocking to her, she did not give up flying.
After a few more years in flying exhibitions, in 1916 Miss Scott retired from flying because of what she saw as a lack of opportunities for female mechanics and engineers. She was also disturbed by how the public took such intense interest in air crashes.
For the next few years Miss Scott turned to the entertainment business, writing movie scripts and working with major studios. She also worked in radio, writing, producing and broadcasting her own programs, using the pseudonym “Roberta.”
Then in 1948 Miss Scott accomplished another designation—as the first woman to ride in a jet as a passenger. The invitation came from Chuck Yeager, Air Force test pilot who was the first to fly faster than the speed of sound. As a tribute to her background as a stunt flyer, according to one source, Yeager “treated her to some snap rolls and a 14,000 feet dive. “A few years later she became a special consultant for the Air Force Museum at Dayton, Ohio’s Wright Patterson AF Base.
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Anne Adams is a retired church staffer. She lives in East Texas and has an historical column for a local newspaper. She has published in Christian and secular publications for more than 40 years.
