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Amelia Earhart

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 9, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009

Amelia Earhart was an American aviator who set many flying records and championed the advancement of women in aviation . She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean , and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland. During a flight to circumnavigate the globe, Earhart disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in July 1937. Her plane wreckage was never found, and she was officially declared lost at sea. Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

WATCH: Women's History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault

Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897. She defied traditional gender roles from a young age. Earhart played basketball, took an auto repair course and briefly attended college.

During World War I , she served as a Red Cross nurse’s aid in Toronto, Canada. Earhart began to spend time watching pilots in the Royal Flying Corps train at a local airfield while in Toronto.

After the war, she returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University in New York as a pre-med student. Earhart took her first airplane ride in California in December 1920 with famed World War I pilot Frank Hawks—and was forever hooked.

In January 1921, she started flying lessons with female flight instructor Neta Snook. To help pay for those lessons, Earhart worked as a filing clerk at the Los Angeles Telephone Company. Later that year, she purchased her first airplane, a secondhand Kinner Airster. She nicknamed the yellow airplane “the Canary.”

Earhart passed her flight test in December 1921, earning a National Aeronautics Association license. Two days later, she participated in her first flight exhibition at the Sierra Airdrome in Pasadena, California .

Earhart’s Aviation Records

Earhart set a number of aviation records in her short career. Her first record came in 1922 when she became the first woman to fly solo above 14,000 feet.

In 1932, Earhart became the first woman (and second person after Charles Lindbergh ) to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She left Newfoundland, Canada, on May 20 in a red Lockheed Vega 5B and arrived a day later, landing in a cow field near Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Upon returning to the United States, Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross—a military decoration awarded for “heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight.” She was the first woman to receive the honor.

Later that year, Earhart made the first solo, nonstop flight across the United States by a woman. She started in Los Angeles and landed 19 hours later in Newark, New Jersey . She also became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the United States mainland in 1935.

The Ninety-Nines

Earhart consistently worked to promote opportunities for women in aviation.

In 1929, after placing third in the All-Women’s Air Derby—the first transcontinental air race for women—Earhart helped to form the Ninety-Nines, an international organization for the advancement of female pilots.

She became the first president of the organization of licensed pilots, which still exists today and represents women flyers from 44 countries.

1937 Flight Around the World

On June 1, 1937, Amelia Earhart took off from Oakland, California, on an eastbound flight around the world. It was her second attempt to become the first pilot ever to circumnavigate the globe.

She flew a twin-engine Lockheed 10E Electra and was accompanied on the flight by navigator Fred Noonan. They flew to Miami, then down to South America, across the Atlantic to Africa, then east to India and Southeast Asia.

The pair reached Lae, New Guinea, on June 29. When they reached Lae, they already had flown 22,000 miles. They had 7,000 more miles to go before reaching Oakland.

What Happened to Amelia Earhart?

Earhart and Noonan departed Lae for tiny Howland Island—their next refueling stop—on July 2. It was the last time Earhart was seen alive. She and Noonan lost radio contact with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca , anchored off the coast of Howland Island, and disappeared en route.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized a massive two-week search for the pair, but they were never found. On July 19, 1937, Earhart and Noonan were declared lost at sea.

Scholars and aviation enthusiasts have proposed many theories about what happened to Amelia Earhart. The official position from the U.S. government is that Earhart and Noonan crashed into the Pacific Ocean, but there are numerous theories regarding their disappearance.

Crash and Sink Theory

According to the crash and sink theory, Earhart’s plane ran out of gas while she searched for Howland Island, and she crashed into the open ocean somewhere in the vicinity of the island.

Several expeditions over the past 15 years have attempted to locate the plane’s wreckage on the seafloor near Howland. High-tech sonar and deep-sea robots have failed to yield clues about the Electra’s crash site.

Gardner Island Hypothesis

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) postulates that Earhart and Noonan veered off-course from Howland Island and landed instead some 350 miles to the Southwest on Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro, in the Republic of Kiribati. The island was uninhabited at the time.

A week after Earhart’s disappearance, Navy planes flew over the island. They noted recent signs of habitation but found no evidence of an airplane.

TIGHAR believes that Earhart—and perhaps Noonan—may have survived for days or even weeks on the island as castaways before dying there. Since 1988, several TIGHAR expeditions to the island have turned up artifacts and anecdotal evidence in support of this hypothesis.

Some of the artifacts include a piece of Plexiglas that may have come from the Electra’s window, a woman’s shoe dating back to the 1930s, improvised tools, a woman’s cosmetics jar from the 1930s and bones that appeared to be part of a human finger.

In June 2017, a TIGHAR-led expedition arrived on Nikumaroro with four forensically trained bone-sniffing border collies to search the island for any skeletal remains of Earhart or Noonan. The search turned up no bones or DNA.

In August 2019, Robert Ballard, the ocean explorer known for locating the wreck of the Titanic , led a team to search for Earhart's plane in the waters around Nikumaroro. They saw no signs of the Electra.

Other Theories About Earhart’s Disappearance

There are numerous conspiracy theories about Earhart’s disappearance. One theory posits that Earhart and Noonan were captured and executed by the Japanese.

Another theory claims that the pair served as spies for the Roosevelt administration and assumed new identities upon returning to the United States.

READ MORE: Tantalizing Theories About the Earhart Disappearance

The Life of Amelia Earhart: Purdue Libraries .

Amelia Earhart: Missing for 80 Years But Not Forgotten: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum .

Model, Static, Lockheed Electra, Amelia Earhart: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Exclusive: Bone-Sniffing Dogs to Hunt for Amelia Earhart’s Remains: National Geographic .

Where Is Amelia Earhart? Three Theories but No Smoking Gun: National Geographic .

The Earhart Project: The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) .

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Papers of Amelia Earhart, 1835-1977

Correspondence, photographs, baby books, etc., of Amelia Earhart, aviator.

• Creation: 1835-1977

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Access Restrictions:

Access. Originals are closed; use microfilm M-129. An appointment is necessary to use any audiovisual material.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Amelia Earhart as well as copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns. Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.

Scope and Contents

The bulk of this collection consists of papers about Earhart saved by her sister, Muriel Earhart Morrissey. It is arranged in five series: Series I, Family papers (#1-6), includes the 1835 passport of Earhart's great-grandfather, Gebhard Harres; genealogical papers relating to the Otis and Earhart families; a few letters and other items of Edwin Stanton Earhart; and miscellaneous correspondence and other items of Amy Otis Earhart. Series II, Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937 (#7-18f), consists of papers generated during Earhart's lifetime, and include baby books; a few school-related papers; a small amount of correspondence; some writings, most of which concern women and aviation; and programs and awards. Of particular interest is a 1936 letter by Earhart to a young woman who had inquired about career opportunities for women in aviation (see #14). Series III, Photographs and graphics (#19-46), is divided into two groups: #19-34, which were previously inventoried and cataloged as part of the Schlesinger Library's Microfilm of Photograph Collections (M-54), and #35-46, which were received as addenda and not previously cataloged. This artificial division is maintained in an effort to minimize the confusion which could ensue from the renumbering of the photographs in #19-34, which have been so frequently used and cited by researchers. The two groups together consist of numerous photographs of Earhart, her planes and associates, her family, George Palmer Putnam, and memorial sites. In addition, there is a painting of Earhart's great-grandmother, a drawing of Earhart, and a black-and-white etching of Earhart and Fred Noonan on their sinking plane. Series IV, Muriel Earhart Morrissey (#47-68), documents some of Muriel Earhart Morrissey's extensive involvement with Earhart's history, memory, and admirers after her disappearance. It includes correspondence re: the disappearance; tributes, biographies, memorials, poems, and sheet music, etc. honoring Earhart; commemorative stamps; and a philatelic catalog. Series V, Newsclippings, tearsheets, and memorabilia (#69-83), consists of printed material and a variety of artifacts, including a recording of Earhart's voice, medals, buttons, plaques, book inscriptions, leis, a leaf and a rose. Most of the newsclippings have been transferred to the Amy Otis Earhart Papers (MC 398) and integrated with the clippings in that collection for microfilming in one chronological sequence. Muriel Earhart Morrissey's scrapbook of clippings about Earhart and George Palmer Putnam's serialized biography of Earhart remain in this series.

Additional Description

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas, the first daughter of Amy (Otis) Earhart and Edwin Stanton Earhart. Her sister, Grace Muriel, was born three years later. The family moved several times (to Kansas City, Kansas; Des Moines; St. Paul; Chicago) during Earhart's childhood as her father tried unsuccessfully to establish a profitable legal career. Earhart graduated from Chicago's Hyde Park High School in 1916. Edwin Stanton Earhart's increasing reliance on alcohol and his inability to hold a job led eventually to a divorce, in 1924. In addition to attending a variety of schools (Ogontz School in Greenfield, Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Harvard University), and experimenting with numerous areas of study (e.g., pre-med, French poetry, physics) and types of jobs (e.g., wartime nurses' aide in Toronto, telephone company worker, photographer), Earhart developed an interest in the relatively new field of aviation. While living in Los Angeles she took flying lessons from Neta Snook, pioneer woman pilot, and in 1921 made her first solo flight and bought her first airplane. After her parents' divorce Earhart moved with her mother to Medford, Massachusetts, where Muriel was teaching. She taught English to immigrant factory workers and in 1926 became a social worker and resident at Denison House, a Boston settlement. During these years she continued to fly at local airfields and in 1927 was offered, and accepted, the opportunity to accompany Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon on their 1928 flight to England. She thereby became the first woman to make the transatlantic crossing by air, and an instant celebrity. Intensely competitive, Earhart participated in numerous air races and held a variety of speed records and "firsts": she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo (1932) and first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California (January 1935), and from Los Angeles to Mexico City (April 1935). Earhart was a mentor of other women pilots and worked to improve their acceptance in the heavily male field of aviation. In 1929 she helped organize the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots (with 99 charter members) and served as its president until 1933. Married in 1931 to publisher and publicist George Palmer Putnam, Earhart still maintained her grueling nationwide lecture tours, which largely financed her flying, served as women's career counselor at Purdue University, and wrote books and articles on women and aviation. An outspoken advocate of women's equality, Earhart also designed sportswear for women, luggage suitable for air travel, and travel stationery. Earhart made two attempts to fly around the world in 1937. The first, in March, ended when her airplane was badly damaged on take-off in California. On June 1 she took off from Miami with navigator Fred Noonan, intending to fly around the equator from west to east. On July 2, having completed 22,000 miles of the trip, Earhart and Fred Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, for Howland Island. They never reached the island. Despite an intensive search by the United States Navy and others, following radio distress calls, no trace of the fliers or their plane has ever been found. The numerous Earhart biographies include Mary S. Lovell's The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), Doris L. Rich's Amelia Earhart: A Biography (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), and two by her sister, Muriel Earhart Morrissey ( Courage is the Price: The Biography of Amelia Earhart , Wichita, Kan.: McCormick-Armstrong Publishing Division, 1963; and, with Carol L. Osborne, Amelia, My Courageous Sister: Biography of Amelia Earhart , Santa Clara, Calif.: Osborne Publisher, 1987). Jean Backus has edited a collection of Earhart's letters, based on the Amy Otis Earhart Papers, also in the Schlesinger Library ( Letters from Amelia: An Intimate Portrait of Amelia Earhart , Boston: Beacon Press, 1982). For other biographical sketches, see Notable American Women: 1607-1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Dictionary of American Biography , Vol. XXII, Supplement Two (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958).

ARRANGEMENT

The collection is arranged in number series:

• Series I. Family papers
• Series II. Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937
• Series III. Photographs and graphics
• Series IV. Muriel Earhart Morrissey
• Series V. Newsclippings, tearsheets, memorabilia

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession numbers: 463, 519, 521, 545, 671, 700, 916, 1060, 78-M147, 80-M194, 82-M142, 89-M210 These papers of or about Amelia Earhart were given to the Schlesinger Library by Muriel (Earhart) Morrissey between August 1962 and November 1989, and by Alma Lutz in January 1963.

MICROFILM OF COLLECTION

The papers of Amelia Earhart and related collections were selected for microfilming in order to provide copies to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, and because they are frequently requested by researchers.

• Dates and/or other information have been written on some items by a number of people. In organizing the material, the processor left undated material that was grouped with dated items where it was. All dates and other information added by the processor are in square brackets. Undated items are filed at the end of their respective folders.
• The pages of some items were numbered to aid the filmer, the proofreaders, and researchers. These numbers are in square brackets.
• The film was proofread by the processor and corrections made where necessary. These corrections may disrupt the sequence of frame numbers.
• Some of the material in the collection was difficult to film due to such problems as flimsy paper with text showing through, faded or smudged writing, faint pencil notations, folded clippings, clippings discolored from glue or adhesive tape, or blurred photocopies from tightly bound volumes. The film was carefully produced to insure that these items are as legible as possible.
• In some letters the text on the two inside pages was written in two different directions, and in some the final lines of text and the signature are on page one. In these cases letters were filmed as they appear; pages were not turned and first pages were not refilmed.
• In some cases, enclosures referred to in letters are missing.
• Letters of one or more pages with either the salutation or the signature missing, as well as portions of letters, articles, or clippings, have been marked as fragments [frag.].
• Both sides of postcards were filmed.
• The versos of envelopes were filmed only if they contained a return address or notes.
• Some scrapbook pages had to be filmed more than once because of folded and/or multiple-paged items, such as Christmas cards, clippings, or programs.
• Many loose clippings were mounted by the processor. Clippings from newspapers already on microfilm (according to Newspapers in Microform, United States , Library of Congress, 1973), were discarded after filming.
• All photographs were microfilmed with the collection. They are also available on the microfilm of the Schlesinger Library photograph collection (M-54).
• Some magazines, books, and other multiple-paged items were not filmed in their entirety, but only the pertinent page(s), with the title page where necessary to establish name and date of publication.
• After filming, periodicals were removed to the Schlesinger Library periodical file.
• Copies of this microfilm edition of the Amelia Earhart collections (M-129) may be borrowed on interlibrary loan from the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

For a list of the contents of the Amelia Earhart Microfilm, see the inventory that follows. When requesting microfilmed material, please use the microfilm number (M-129) and the reel number.

• Folders #1f+-32: M-129, Reel 1
• Folders #33-69: M-129, Reel 2
• Folders #70f-83: M-129, Reel 3

Related Material:

There is related material at the Schlesinger Library; see Amelia Earhart videotapes, 1932-1977 ( Vt-54 ), Amy Otis Earhart Papers, 1884-1987 ( MC 398 ), Amy Otis Earhart Papers, 1944, Undated ( A/E11 ), and Clarence Strong Williams Papers,1907-1971 ( A/W722 ). The Purdue University Library also has a large collection of Earhart papers. Additional Otis family papers are in the possession of the family and will eventually be given to the Minnesota Historical Society.

Container list

• Box 1: folders 2-17
• Box 2: folders 47-67
• Box 3: folders 69-75, 83
• Folio+ Box 4: folders 76m-82m

INDEX OF SELECTED CORRESPONDENTS

This index contains names of letter writers represented in various correspondence folders but not specifically listed in the folder descriptions.

• Cochran, Jacqueline 47
• Connally, John B. 50
• De Carie, Margot 48
• de Schweinitz, Louise 48
• Devine, Thomas E. 47
• French, Edein 48
• Gervais, Joseph 53
• Goerner, Frederick 47, 50
• Holley, Clyde E. 53
• International Women's Air and Space Museum 48
• Kleppner, Amy 53
• Lynn, Evelyne 54
• Mantz, Paul 47
• May, Loma 54
• Mowbray, Eva 54
• National Portrait Gallery 48
• Ninety-Nines 47
• Noyes, Blanche 48
• Palmer, Gordon H. 55
• Pellegreno, Ann H. 47
• Reischauer, Edwin O. 53
• Roosevelt, Eleanor 47
• Royer, Lloyd 48
• Rueckert, Ruth 47
• Safford, Laurance Frye 47
• Saltonstall, Leverett 50
• Stanton, Frank 50
• Sylvester, Arthur 50
• Theil College 47
• Vaeth, J. Gordon 47, 48
• Walker, Agnes 54
• Women's Hall of Fame 48
• Wright, Lucile M. 47, 48

Processing Information

Reprocessed: April 1990 By: Katherine Kraft

Genre / Form

• Aeronautics
• Women in aeronautics

Related Names

• Reischauer, Edwin O. (Edwin Oldfather), 1910-1990 (Person)

Administrative Information

Repository details.

Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository

The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.

Collection organization

Amelia Earhart Papers, 1835-1977; item description, dates. A-129, folder #. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Cite Item Description

Amelia Earhart Papers, 1835-1977; item description, dates. A-129, folder #. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/sch00107/catalog Accessed April 24, 2024.

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The Fascinating Life of Amelia Earhart: A Pioneer in Aviation

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