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Katharine Wright[edit]
The Wright Sister

Early Life Additions At the young age of 14, Katharine was given the huge task of managing the household due to the death of her mother.

College Katharine attended Oberlin College in northeastern Ohio, one of the few coed colleges at the time. Katharine excelled in most of her courses of study, with the exception of math. She met with a tutor three times a week and that tutor, Henry J Haskell, would later become her husband. Katharine was the only child of Milton and Susan Wright to become college-educated. Katharine studied to become a teacher, and after graduating from Oberlin, she took a job as a Latin teacher at Steele High School in Dayton, Ohio.

Family Matters

Katharine took care of Milton Wright, the father of the Wright family while the brothers were in North Carolina for the first flight so that the brothers were able to focus on their work while they were not in Dayton. When Orville was involved in a plane crash that left him severely injured, Katharine took care of him until he was back to help. During this time, Katharine wrote Wilbur saying that “Brother has been suffering so much… and I am so dead tired when morning comes that I can not hold a pen.” Orville later said that without the aid of his sister, he would have died.

Managing things at Home The Wright brothers were all privately funded by their own cycle shop, so without Katharine, the amount of work to be done in Kitty Hawk would have been limited to whatever money they had before heading to Kitty Hawk. She would do things such as pack for the Wright Brothers and provide solutions to problems not having to do directly with the plane or the mechanics behind it.

Other than Aeronautics Katharine was a huge supporter for Women's suffrage, she was one of the main leads in organizing a march through Dayton with 1,300 supporters.

Social Managing When the Wright Brothers began to receive requests from engineering societies to do talks as their fame grew, they were not ready or longing to do such talks, and without the pressure of their sister, Katharine, they would likely have not done such talks. In 1909, Katharine joined her brother Orville in France as his, “social manager”. She took two hours of French lessons every morning and picked up the language rather quickly, likely due to her already being fluent in Greek and Latin, in addition to English. This helped the Wright brothers to have an even bigger effect on the global community. The Wright Brothers would often take their sister up in the plane during test flights, to show their confidence in their invention. This makes Katharine one of the first females to ever fly as a passenger.


 * 1) ^ mentalfloss.com/article/79186/did-you-know-there-was-wright-sister.
 * 2) ^ nps.gov/daav/learn/historyculture/katharinewrightslifestory.htm.
 * 3) ^ wrightstories.com/the-wright-brothers-plus-one-the-influence-of-their-sister/.
 * 4) ^ http://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Wright_Family/Katharine_Wright/Katharine_Wright.htm