Women’s History Month: Ida Holdgreve, the 20th century’s most important seamstress

In the cosmic scheme of things–Holdgreve’s story isn’t that big. What she did would’ve been done one way or another with history proceeded as it did. Of course–that’s rather irrelevant since she DID do what she did and made a significant leap forward in technology happen.

So what was her job? She was a seamstress. You see, Orville and Wilbur Wright needed someone able to put fabric on the wings and fuselage of what became the first airplane to actually fly. They put out an ad, she answered it. Did she thing what they then asked her to do was crazy? Did they tell her straight up front what the plan was?

And after the success, once the Wrights made the decision to build more planes, Holdgreve became the first–and at the time ONLY–woman to be permitted to work on airplanes anywhere in the world. Eventually, the company grew and was sold by the Wrights, but Holdgreve remained, supervising fabric application to the wings/fuselages of DH-4s during American involvement in World War One–and she was no longer the only woman. Her entire department consisted of seamstresses brought into the war effort to help assemble planes. When the war was over, Holdgreve went back to ‘normal’ fabrics as a drape/upholstery seamstress.

The image we have of women during the two world wars is of ‘Rosie the Riveter’–but really, the icon ought to be Ida the Seamstress. Without Ms. Holdgreve, there’s no Bessie Coleman and there’s no Mary Wilkins, either.

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