May 11 – 17
May 11, 1924
Ninfa Rodríguez Laurenzo is born. When her husband died in 1969, she struggled to run the business they’d built supplying tortillas and pizza dough to restaurants. After a few years, she opened a taco stand in the front portion of the factory and its success led to Ninfa’s restaurants in Houston.
May 12, 2014
Cornelia G. Kennedy dies. Kennedy joined her father’s law practice after finishing law school. After nineteen years in private practice, Kennedy, in 1966, was elected judge in the Wayne County (MI) Circuit Court. Four years later, she was appointed to the federal court where, between 1977 and 1979, she served as chief judge.
May 13, 1920
Ernesta Drinker Ballard is born. She started her own greenhouse business in the mid-1950s and was chief executive of Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 1963-1981.
May 14, 1994
Hazel Brannon Smith dies. Smith bought her first newspaper in 1936, then, over the next twenty years, bought three more weekly papers in rural Mississippi. She risked her success as an editor-publisher, her livelihood, and her safety as she increasingly wrote editorials condemning segregation and supporting the Civil Rights Movement. Two of her newspaper offices were bombed, one in 1964, the same year that she won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. The awards committee noted her “steadfast adherence to her editorial duties in the face of great pressure and opposition.”
May 15, 1964
Mary Vail Andress dies. From 1924-1940 Andress was an assistant cashier with Chase National Bank, and the bank’s first female officer. She got her start in banking after World War I, when she was hired by the Paris office of Banker’s Trust to establish travelers’ services, like currency exchange. During World War I, Andress worked for the Red Cross, building and operating the huge complex at Toul, France, that provided thousands of soldiers with food and rest. The US Congress awarded her the Distinguished Service Medal for her work at Toul. At the start of World War II, Andress left Chase to again do war relief work, this time with American Friends of France headed by Anne Morgan (JP’s daughter). After the war she worked for Kidder, Peabody.
May 16, 1925
Nancy G. Roman is born. Roman was NASA’s first female executive and its first chief of astronomy.
May 17, 1931
Annie Frazier Riggs dies. In 1904, Riggs purchased a small hotel in Fort Stockton (TX). She was a single mother who had supported her family by running a popular boarding house in Fort Stockton. Eventually she turned the hotel into a boarding house. The business was successful enough for Riggs to employ a full-time cook and a manager.
Last week in women’s business history
May 4, 1893
Annie Mayne White, recently widowed, sailed from Ireland to the US to take over her husband’s job, heading the Irish Woolen Manufacturing and Export Company’s exhibit at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. White stayed in the US, eventually operating a dressmaking business where her daughter, legendary Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel White Snow, learned much about fine apparel.
May 5, 1864
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman is born. She was the investigative reporter “Nellie Bly” as well as an inventor and business executive.
May 6, 1944
Olive Stott Gabriel dies. Gabriel was a suffragist and an attorney in New York State. In 1929, she was elected president of the National Association of Women Lawyers and served 3 terms.
May 7, 1845
Mary Eliza Mahoney is born. After graduating from nursing school in 1879, she became a private duty nurse, one of the career paths opened to Black nurses.
May 8, 1902
Fay M. Jackson is born. She was a journalist and publicist who founded one of the earliest Black news magazines on the West Coast.
May 9, 1934
Katharine Ryan Gibbs dies. In 1911, Gibbs and her sister, Mary Ryan, bought a secretarial school in Providence (RI). With Gibbs managing the business and Ryan teaching, they built the highly successful Katharine Gibbs Schools which trained women for high paying secretarial positions.
May 10, 2012
Barbara D’Arcy dies. Merchandise presentation was D’Arcy’s specialty at Bloomingdale’s. She rose to company vice president and wrote Bloomingdale’s Book of Home Decorating.
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