History of Women's Firsts

By kwynn
  • Margaret Brent- First Published American Woman

  • Anne Catherine Hoof Green takes over her late husband's printing and newspaper business, becoming the first American woman to run a print shop. The following year she is named the official printer for the colony of Maryland.

  • The first public high school for girls opens in Worcester, Massachusetts.

  • Antoinette Blackwell becomes the first American woman to be ordained a minister in a recognized denomination (Congregational).

  • Lucy Hobbs becomes the first woman to graduate from dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery.

  • In Wyoming, for the first time in U.S. history, women are allowed to serve on a grand jury.

  • Susanna Medora Salter becomes the first woman elected mayor of an American town, in Argonia, Kansas.

  • Mary Kies becomes the first woman to receive a patent,

  • Alice Guy Blaché, the first American woman film director,

  • March 12, the first Girl Scouts troop in America is founded in Savannah, Georgia, by Juliette Gordon Low.

  • Mary Davenport-Engberg is the first woman to conduct a symphony orchestra, in Bellingham, Washington.

  • Maxine Dunlap becomes first American woman to earn a glider pilot license.

  • Hattie Caraway of Arkansas becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate

  • The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) is established in the United States.

  • Edith Houghton becomes the first woman hired as a first major-league baseball scout

  • Oveta Culp Hobby becomes the first woman to serve as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare

  • Jerrie Cobb is the first woman in the U.S. to undergo astronaut testing.

  • The Equal Pay Act makes it illegal for companies to pay different rates to women and men who do the same work.

  • Diane Crump becomes the first female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby.