This Week in Women’s Business History

June 22 – 28

Jun. 22, 1927
Rose Hanskat incorporates her corset-making business as Stayform Co.

Jun. 23, 2002
Evelyn Walker dies. Between 1930 and 1976, Walker wrote, directed and produced children’s programs for Birmingham, AL radio and television stations. She was also the chairman of school radio for the city of Birmingham.

Jun. 24, 1880
Agnes Nestor is born. She was a labor leader with the International Glove Workers Union and Chicago Women’s Trade Union League.

Jun. 25, 1874
Rose Cecil O’Neill is born. She created Kewpie Dolls and was a freelance illustrator and writer.

Jun. 26, 1868
Ada S. McKinley is born. She founded the South Side Settlement House in Chicago in 1919 and fully staffed it with members of the Black community.

Jun. 27, 1989
Dorothy Stimson Bullitt dies. In 1946 she bought a small Seattle radio station and gave it the call letters KING. Two years later she added KING-FM to the business and bought Seattle’s only television station. It, too, was renamed with the KING call letters. She guided King Broadcasting Company until 1961 when she retired as chairman of the board.

Jun. 28, 1870
Minnie Williams Miller is born. She was a rancher who bred cattle and sheep and was president of the family’s farm mortgage company.

Last week in women’s business history

Jun. 15, 1929
Dorothy Tricarico-Kerr is born. She was curator of the Edward C. Blum Design Laboratory (now part of the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology).

Jun. 16, 1994
Frances Corey dies. Corey spent most of her career marketing fashions for Bloomingdale’s, Bullock’s, and May department stores. In 1953, she was named executive vice president of R.H. Macy, the first woman to reach that position in the company.

Jun. 17, 1962
Laura Allman Frazier dies. For thirty years, when segregation made travel difficult and dangerous for African-Americans, Frazier and her husband opened their Austin, TX home to Black students and tourists. Mrs. J.W. Frazier’s lodgings were listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book. Today their home is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jun. 18, 1862
Virginia D. H. Furman is born. She was an officer of the Columbia Trust Company of New York and the first president of the Association of Bank Women.

Jun. 19, 1939
Grace Abbott dies. Abbott served as the second director of the US Children’s Bureau, then part of the US Dept. of Commerce and Labor.

Jun. 20, 1959
Blanche S. Geary dies. Early in her career, Geary managed, then helped design and build, model apartments in New York City, to replace the dreaded tenements. Later she worked for the YWCA as it built lodgings for working women. As a private developer, Geary built the Knollwood Park Development in Elmsford, NY, and the Stewart Hall co-operative apartment building in New York City.

Jun. 21, 2004
Ruth Leach Amonette dies. In 1943, just four years after joining IBM, Amonette was named a vice president. She left IBM in 1953 when she married.