Pioneer pilot Harriet Quimby honored at Branch County airport

BRANCH COUNTY — Harriet Quimby might have been the first American woman to earn a pilot's license and the first woman to make a solo flight across the English Channel, but her origins are the subject to some debate.

Locals claim the aviation pioneer for Branch County, but historian Dave McDonald said it's more likely Quimby was born in Manistee County’s Arcadia Township in 1875.

Tom Fisher, president of the Flying Club of Branch County, unveiled on Sunday, Nov. 13, a replica of the flying suit designed by Quimby at a display erected for her at Branch County Memorial Airport.

McDonald said Quimby was the second woman and first in the U.S. to obtain a pilot’s license. Quimby, who also was a journalist, died in a plane crash less than three months after the famous English Channel flight.

The Quimby family lived near Little Rose Lake in Ovid Township until 1867, when William, the family patriarch, returned from the Civil War. They moved to Manistee, where they ran a patent medicine business.

The family then traveled to Arroyo Grande, California, between 1987 and 1890. McDonald said Harriett claimed that as her birthplace. That may be due to her age dropping from 27 to 18 as she traveled from California to New York to continue her journalism career in 1903.

Quimby convinced employer Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly to pay the $750 fee to obtain her pilot’s license.

On April 16, 1912, she became the first woman to fly across the channel after traveling with airshows in the U.S. and Europe. McDonald said the endeavor got little notice in the press because it occurred days after the sinking of the Titanic.

On July 1, 1912, Quimby flew out to Boston Lighthouse in Boston Harbor about 3,000 feet, then returned and circled the airfield in preparation to set a speed record in her new French plane.

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William A.P. Willard, the organizer of the event, was a passenger in her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane.

At an altitude of 1,000 feet, the aircraft unexpectedly pitched forward for reasons still unknown. Both Willard and Quimby were ejected from their seats and fell to their deaths while the plane glided down into the mud in the bay.

The pioneering aviator was honored with a U.S. stamp in recent years. Her flight suit was unique because it could be buttoned into pants, then rebuttoned into a skirt, more proper for a lady of her time.

Over two dozen heard her history Sunday for the unveiling of the replica flight suit.

— Contact Don Reid: dReid@Gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DReidTDR.

This article originally appeared on Coldwater Daily Reporter: Replica flight suit for Harriett Quimby unveiled at Branch County airport