On This Date in Minnesota History: September 17

September 17, 1911 – According to today’s issue of The Minneapolis Morning Tribune, the honor of being the first woman ever to enter the school of instruction for aviators conducted by the Wright brothers at their training camp in Dayton, Ohio, belongs to a Minneapolis woman, Mrs. Emma Dewella McKenzie.

Formerly employed at the Tri-State Automobile Company, McKenzie has left for Dayton where she will be taught to operate a flying machine. She will work under contract with the Wright brothers in exhibitions as soon as she has secured her pilot’s license from the Aero Club of America.

McKenzie will not fly under her own name, but has adopted that of Ethel McNorton. She watched the Wright aviators, Howard Gill and Frank Coffyn, perform at the state fair and fairly burned up the telegraph wires between Minneapolis and Dayton until she secured the consent of the Wright Company to allow her to attend their camp at Dayton.

The Minneapolis Morning Tribune; “Minneapolis Woman to Fly Soon as She Gets License”; Sept. 17, 1911; p. 13.

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