This Week in Women’s Business History

August 24 – 30

Aug. 24, 2013
Muriel Siebert dies. Siebert made the New York Stock Exchange co-ed, buying a seat in December 1967. She was also the first woman to serve as New York state’s superintendent of banks.

Aug. 25, 1888
Gertrude Palmer Wixson is born. She was a banker with the Plaza Trust Co. and secretary-treasurer of the Gotham National Bank.

Aug. 26, 1953
Frances Elkins dies. She was a well-known interior decorator who founded her own design firm in Monterey, California in 1918.

Aug. 27, 1896
Margaret Nabel is born. She became a baseball player and the manager of one of the most successful women’s baseball teams, New York Bloomer Girls.

Aug. 28, 1828
María Calvillo formally petitions the Mexican government for title to her father’s Rancho de las Cabras. (She received it).

Aug. 29, 1913
Sylvia Fine is born. She was a successful composer, lyricist, and producer, and managed the career of her husband, entertainer Danny Kaye.

Aug. 30, 1953
Elizabeth B. Grimball dies. An actress, a director, theater producer, and filmmaker, Grimball founded Inter-Theatre Arts School of Acting and Production in 1921.

Last week in women’s business history

Aug. 17, 1967
Esther Pohl Lovejoy dies. After graduating from medical school in 1894, she and her husband, a surgeon, established a private practice. She headed the Portland (OR) Board of Health between 1907 and 1909 then returned to private practice. She co-founded Medical Women’s International Association and was its first president.

Aug. 18, 1896
Dorothy Marckwald is born. She was an interior designer specializing in ocean liners and a principal in the firm Smyth, Urquhart, Marckwald.

Aug. 19, 1995
Margaret Pittman dies. After earning her PhD in bacteriology, Pittman spent most of her career studying typhoid, cholera, and pertussis (whooping cough) and developing vaccines to prevent these diseases. She headed the Laboratory of Bacterial Products at the National Institutes of Health from 1957 until 1971.

Aug. 20, 2013
Marian McPartland dies. This British-born jazz pianist who spent most of her career in the US, created her own record label, Halcyon, when she was unable to get a contract from a recording company.

Aug. 21, 1900
Anne Urquhart is born. She was an interior designer who specialized in ocean liners and was a principal in the firm Smyth, Urquhart, Marckwald.

Aug. 22, 1989
Diana Vreeland dies. Fashion was Vreeland’s career and her passion. She was fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar under Carmel Snow and editor of Vogue. In her later years she was special consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Aug. 23,1897
Violet Davis Reynolds is born. Reynolds started work in April 1914 as a secretary at the Madam CJ Walker Manufacturing Co. and rose to executive director and chairman of the board of directors.