The Stinson Sisters

The Stinson Sisters

1915 & 1918

Katherine Stinson was not only a pioneer in aviation, but for the Stinson family as well. She originally wanted to explore a career as a musician, and learned to fly as a way to earn an income to finance her musical studies, however the 16 year old discovered that her love of flying strongly outweighed her musical dreams (Cadogan). On July 24, 1912 she was the fourth woman in the US to earn her pilots license and year later she began her exhibition career in Cincinnati, Ohio (Smithsonian). After that she decided to pair with her mother in 1913 to start their own company called Stinson Aviation Company; they manufactured and sold aircraft (Cadogan). The two women did this with very little money and a lot of hard work. Eventually this led Katherine to give exhibition flights and in 1913 she became the first woman to carry mail by air (Cadogan). This caught in the interest of her little sister Marjorie.

Katherine tried to dissuade Marjorie to fly, knowing not only the dangers of flying but also the hazards of making it a career. This did not stop Marjorie though, she was a true Stinson woman and nothing would stand in her way. Eventually Katherine lost and Marjorie learned to fly in June of 1914 (Smithsonian). When she was 18 her mother agreed to let her enroll in the Wright School at Dayton and on August 4 Marjorie soloed in an airplane for the first time. About a week later on August 12, 1914 she received her license (Smithsonian). She had grown up seeing her mother and sister know exactly what they wanted and to make it happen, no matter what. She took on this persona herself and wouldn’t let even her family stand in her way.

Eventually, the sisters even taught their brother Jack to fly as well, but not their other brother Eddie. Both Katherine and Marjorie thought he was unreliable, undisciplined and too much of a heavy drinker to learn to fly, but that didn’t stop him either (Cadogan). Eddie Stinson sought flying lessons outside his sisters business and eventually paired with his brother Jack to open up the Stinson Aeroplane Co. in Dayton, Ohio (Cadogan). It seems all the members of the Stinson family could not ignore the calling they felt to be airborne. Marjorie was no exception; Stinson was inducted into the U.S. Aviation Reserve Crops, as its only woman, in 1915 (Smithsonian). After an unsuccessful attempt to establish an airmail route in Texas, Marjorie joined her family in establishing a flight school in San Antonio (Smithsonian).

It was Katherine’s success in her own career that helped fuel her desire to prosper in her family businesses. The sisters opened their own flying school with the profits Katherine earned from her exhibition flights and Marjorie was the principle instructor (Cadogan). Katherine was also an instructor, their brother Edward acted as chief mechanic, and their mother became the business manager (Smithsonian). The business flourished during this time due to the countries interest in aviation. In 1916, with the war in Europe raging, the Royal Canadian Flying Corps began sending their cadets to the Stinson School for training (Smithsonian). While Marjorie was an instructor, she had taught more than 100 Canadian pilots to fly before she was 22 years old (Haynsworth). Marjorie became known as "The Flying Schoolmarm" and her students as "The Texas Escadrille." The school closed at the end of the war in 1918 and Stinson became a draftsman with the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Navy (Smithsonian). Marjorie continued to fly while her sister, Katherine focused on her solo career.

Katherine Stinson had many first as an aviator, being dubbed the “Flying Schoolgirl” (Merry) and the “Air Queen” (Cadogan) were symbols of how she was regarded at the time. On July 18, 1915 she became the first woman to perform a loop at Cicero Field in Chicago (Smithsonian). Later that year she also was credited with performing 80 consecutive loops before flying upside down for a brief period and then carrying out several spins (Cadogan).

Then in 1917 she flew exhibition flights in China and Japan, both countries that had never seen a woman fly before (Cadogan). She flew these exhibition flights in front of crowds with tens of thousands of viewers (Haynsworth), an accomplishment by itself. It was here that she became the first person to fly an airplane at night (Merry). Katherine even went on to be the first woman of the US Air Mail Staff in 1918 (Simbeck). Katherine also had a desire to serve her country though.

During this time that WWI was going on, and Katherine wanted to use her flying to show her patriotism. She volunteered to fly combat mission for the US Army, but was rejected – twice, solely for being a woman (Merry). This was extremely frustrating for her, not to mention completely biased. At the time she was, no doubt, a better and more experienced pilot that some men serving the military, yet they still discriminated.

However, the Stinson spirit inside her could not be stifled, and she persevered. Katherine went on to fly a Curtiss JN-4D Jenny for fundraising tours for the Red Cross during WWI (Smithsonian). She also found other ways to show her patriotism; during WWI she was an ambulance driver in Europe for soldiers (Smithsonian). It was during this time that she contracted Tuberculosis, this combined with general exhaustion forced Katherine to give up flying in 1920 (Cadogan). Throughout her career, Katherine Stinson proved that even though she may have been told no a thousand times before, she would not let that stop her from accomplishing her goals and pursuing her passion for aviation. She was a pioneer for women today to be able to fly.

Works Cited

1.     Cadogan, Mary. Women with Wings : female flyers in fact and fiction. London: Macmillan, 1992.

2.     Haynsworth, Leslie. Amelia Earhart's Daughters : the wild and glorious story of American women aviators from World War II to the dawn of the space age . New York: William Morrow, 1998.

3.     Merry, Lois K. Women Military Pilots of World War II : a history with biographies of American, British, Russian and German aviators. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2011.

4.     Smithsonian. Katherine Stinson -- Women in Aviation and Space History. 15 September 2012 <http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/topics/women/StinsonK.cfm>.

5.     —. Marjorie Stinson -- Women in Aviation and Space History. 15 September 2012 <http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/topics/women/StinsonM.cfm>.

6.     Century of Flight. Barnstorms and Racers - The Women Who Dared The Skies. 11 October 2012 <http://www.century-of-flight.net/>

7.     HARGRAVE - The Pioneers. Katherine & Marjorie Stinsons. 11 October 2012 <http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/stinson_bio.html>.