Business: First Woman To ...

• 1766 - Mary Katherine Goddard and her widowed mother become publishers of the Providence Gazette newspaper and the annual West's Almanack, making Goddard the first woman publisher in America. In 1775, Goddard became the first woman postmaster in the country (in Baltimore), and in 1777 she became the first printer to offer copies of the Declaration of Independence that included the signers' names. In 1789 Goddard opened a Baltimore bookstore, probably the first woman in America to do so.


• 1914 - The death of Marjorie Merriweather Post's father left her the owner of a rapidly growing cereal company, Postum. An only child, she was brought up in the business, taught by her father everything from factory production to high finance. At a time when women were seldom more than secretaries in the business world, she became President of the company. Between 1925 and 1929, she led the company in acquiring over a dozen companies and expanding is product line to more than 60 products.


• 1920s - Martha Matilda Harper started a beauty products system called the Harper Method, eventually realizing over 500 franchises world-wide in the 1920s. Harper is credited with creating the modern retail franchising method.


• 1963 - Lucille Ball is best known for her television shows, but she also appeared in dozens of films, was a Ziegfeld Girl, and was a successful businesswoman -- the first woman to own a film studio. She bought out her then ex-husband Desi Arnaz to become the first woman to run a studio.


• 1967- Muriel "Mickey" Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the first woman to head one of its member firms.

• 1869 - Arabella Mansfield is granted admission to practice law in Iowa, making her the first woman lawyer in the U.S. A year later, Ada H. Kepley, of Illinois, graduates from the Union College of Law in Chicago. She is the first woman lawyer to graduate from a law school.


• 1873 - Belva Lockwood was the first woman admitted to appear before the Supreme Court. She had fought for that right for seven years. Her first case was a divorce, which she won and, for the first time in history, included a judgment forcing the husband to pay alimony.

• 1875 - Lydia Moss Bradley became the first female member of an American national bank board in the United States when she joined the Board of Directors of Peoria's First National Bank in 1875.


• 1934 - Lettie Pate Whitehead becomes the first American woman to serve as a director of a major corporation, The Coca-Cola Company. Lettie Pate Whitehead served as chairwoman of the board of the Whitehead Holding Co., as well as other business interests. She became a savvy business woman in the soft drink industry and was the first woman to serve as a director of a major American corporation when she was appointed in 1934 to the board of directors of the Coca-Cola Co. She remained on the board for nearly 20 years.


• 1910 - Nellie Bly became a pioneer in journalism and investigative reporting during the 1880s and 1890s. Bly retired from journalism after her marriage to Robert Seaman in 1895, but embarked on a new career after her husband's death 10 years later in 1910. Taking over his failing industries, she introduced the steel barrel to the distilling process in America and made his companies a huge success. For almost 10 years, she managed two multimillion-dollar companies. Bly took charge of the companies, American Steel Barrel Company and Ironclad Manufacturing Company, on Mr. Seaman's death in 1910.


• 1963 - Katharine Graham takes the reins at The Washington Post after the suicide of her husband, making her the first woman to head a Fortune 500 company.


• 1997 - Marjorie Scardino is named CEO of Pearson, a $3.5 billion international media conglomerate based in London, which owns 50% of The Economist, making her the first woman to head a top 100 company on the London Stock Exchange. Scardino decided to focus Pearson as a media company, selling such unrelated properties as Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, and purchasing various educational and publishing properties (including Information Please and Fact Monster).

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