1922: Doctor Laura M. Wright

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

At Eighty-two She Manages a Plumbing Shop

Mrs. Laura M. Wright, of Belvidere, New Jersey, celebrated her eighty-second birthday by doing her usual work, which, as manager of a plumbing shop, consisted in taking calls over the telephone, seeing that the plumbers’ assistants left on time and arrived on time for their appointments, meeting customers and supplying their demands. Incidentally, she walked a mile to work in the morning, and walked a mile home at night. “I never,” she said, “miss my mile of oxygen.”

1922: Writer Nina Wilcox Putnam

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

“Why I Have Got So Far So Good”

All kidding to one side, the reason I got things at first was because I had to, or the grocer would have marked our family off his list. Later I got them because I wanted them so bad that a lady such as myself can’t say it and keep polite. And finally — but you’ll have to read to the end of this piece to find that out, because I ain’t got the nerve to put it here at the top

by Nina Wilcox Putnam

Over to the West Side Ladies’ Wednesday Club on West Main Street, New York City, the other afternoon, which I had went to it on account of being and with the further knowledge at I would not only be encouraged to talk about myself when I got there, but that the Pres. would slip me a unobtrusive envelope for same at the blow-off — well, over to this club I got asked a question which comes to every author at least once in their life.

1922: Traffic Manager Marie Melchior

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

A Fleet of 150 Trucks With a Girl at the Helm

Miss Marie Melchior is traffic manager of a big fleet of motor trucks, certainly an unusual role for a woman. But consider the further fact that Miss Melchior is eighteen years old. Yet she directs the operation of one hundred and fifty motor trucks.

Ada Lovelace: Free Comic!

Not from Google Books, but still.

Go here to read the comic. And if you have an iPad, it’s a free app too!

1917: Attorney Anna Moscowitz

From a 1917 issue of The American Magazine:

A Woman Lawyer Who Has Made Good

The winter sun was creeping over the housetops as the steamer bearing a group of emigrants from Europe passed slowly through New York Harbor. One family in particular, the Moscowitz group, stared with frightened and bewildered eyes at this new and strange land they were about to enter. Cakes of ice beat against the side of the steamer, grinding and crashing and making fearful noises. The sight of those buildings so near to them, the large mass of roofs, was terrifying. In Russia, one could see for miles around. Here everything was shut off.

Suddenly, Anna Moscowitz, a baby of two years, opened her eyes, and looking at the new country from her mother’s arms crowed delightedly and stretched out her arms as if to gather it in. And she has fulfilled the unconscious prediction she made that winter day.

1917: Aviatrix Katherine Stinson

From a 1917 issue of The American Magazine:

A Woman Who Teaches Men How to Fly

When the science of aviation began to make people sit up and take notice, the anti-suffragists rubbed their hands in glee.

“Here is one thing that women cannot do,” they said; “women are too temperamental, too erratic, for aviation.”

But their glee soon vanished. More than one hundred of the aviators flying for England were taught and trained in the United States at the “Stinson School of Flying” at San Antonio, Texas. And the “Stinson School of Flying” is a girl! And the girl is one of the most remarkable aviators in the world! And she is only twenty years old!