This Week in Women’s Business History

February 16 – 22

Feb. 16, 1893
Katharine Cornell is born. She was a famed actress, theatrical producer, and co-founder of the Cornell-McClintic theatrical company.

Feb. 17, 1900
Viola G. Mitchell Turner is born. Turner was a vice president and member of the board of directors of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Feb. 18, 2003
Jean W. Mahon dies. A pioneer in public relations, Mahon rose from agent to executive vice president.

Feb. 19, 2001
Hilde Ruth Monkmeyer dies. Monkmeyer was an agent representing photographers. She and her husband founded Monkmeyer Press Photo Service, one of the first stock photo companies.

Feb. 20, 1898
Jessica Daves is born. She was editor of Vogue, 1952-1962.

Feb. 21, 1976
Prudence Walker Allured dies. She was the first woman to receive a degree in economics and business administration from Colorado College. In 1931 upon the death of her husband, she took over the candy-industry magazine they founded, The Manufacturing Confectioner.

Feb. 22, 1962
Alieda van Wesep dies. She was Lord & Taylor’s vice president for advertising and publicity under president Dorothy Shaver and the only female among Shaver’s five VPs.

Last week in women’s business history

Feb. 9, 1882
Margaret Gaffney Haughery dies. Haughery was an illiterate widow who became a successful New Orleans businesswoman. She started a two-cow dairy to supply milk to orphans, selling any surplus in the neighborhood. It grew into a commercial business with forty cows. Under her management, a bakery that she took over because it was failing grew into the largest in the country. She also provided low interest loans to other business owners. Haughery used her profits to support widows and orphans cared for by the Catholic Sisters of Charity.

Feb. 10, 1945
Alice Foote MacDougall dies. She built a $2 million business empire around the coffee roasting business she started in 1907. That empire included coffee shops, restaurants, and, in addition to her packaged coffee, tea, cocoa, jams, and jellies.

Feb. 11, 1902
Helen Johnson Sioussat is born. She was an executive at CBS radio and television.

Feb. 12, 1863
Edith Griswold is born. She was a patent attorney in private practice.

Feb. 13, 2013
Jane Cooke Wright dies. Wright followed her father (one of the first Black doctors to graduate from Harvard Medical School) into medicine, graduating from New York Medical College in 1945. Ten years later, she was director of chemotherapy research at New York University Medical Center. In 1967, she became associate dean and head of the cancer chemotherapy department at her alma mater, New York Medical College.

Feb. 14, 1894
Mary Cardwell Dawson is born. She founded and directed the National Negro Opera Company and Cardwell Dawson Choir.

Feb. 15, 1893
Evangeline Shortall McAllister is born. She was a New York Life insurance agent in Nebraska starting in the 1930s.