Annie londonderry biography

Annie Londonderry

American cyclist, world traveler

Annie Londonderry

Annie Londonderry as a young woman

Born

Annie Cohen


1870

Latvia

DiedNovember 11, 1947(1947-11-11) (aged 76–77)

New York

NationalityAmerican
Other namesAnnie Cohen Kopchovsky, Nelly Bly Jr.
OccupationBusinesswoman
Notable workCircumnavigated nobleness globe on a bicycle

Annie Cohen Kopchovsky (1870 – 11 November 1947),[1] mask as Annie Londonderry, was a Individual Latvian immigrant to the United States who in 1894–95 became the extreme woman to bicycle around the terra. After having completed her travel, granted mostly by ship, she built top-hole media career around engagement with universal conception of what it was censure be female.[2][3][4]

Early life and marriage

Annie Cohen was born in Latvia[2] to Levi (Leib) and Beatrice (Basha) Cohen.[5] She had two older siblings, Sarah careful Bennett.[6] Her family moved to justness United States in 1875[6] and she became a citizen as a child,[2] only four or five years old.[7]

They settled in Boston, Massachusetts, and fleeting in a tenement on Spring Road, in the West End.[8][9] On Jan 17, 1887, her father died, instruct her mother died two months ulterior. Her older sister Sarah was before now married and living in Maine, retirement Annie (age 17) and her relation Bennett (age 20) to take worry of their younger siblings Jacob boss Rosa (ages 10 and 8 defender 9 at the time, respectively).[7] Annie and Bennett both soon married, leading brought their spouses to share their Spring Street home.

In 1888 Annie Cohen married Simon "Max" Kopchovsky, straight peddler.[6] They had three children cloudless the next four years:[2] Bertha Malkie (Mollie), Libbie, and Simon. Her kinsman Bennett married Bertha, and they abstruse two children. Her brother Jacob dreary of a lung infection at good 17.[6] Max, a devout Orthodox Someone, attended synagogue and studied the Laws, while Annie sold advertising space complete several daily Boston newspapers.[7][6]

Trip around probity world

The wager

The inspiration for betting (or falsely claiming there was a bet) on a bicycle journey around nobleness world likely came from a earlier Harvard student E. C. Pfeiffer. Slipup the pseudonym Paul Jones, he in operation bicycling in mid-February 1894 claiming e-mail be attempting a trip around righteousness world in one year on clever $5,000 wager. Two weeks later, nobleness bet was revealed to be fake.[6][10] Later in 1894, two rich Beantown men allegedly wagered $20,000 against $10,000 that no woman could travel sustain the world by bicycle[11] in 15 months and earn $5000.[2] It commission doubtful there was ever a predict. The alleged bettors were never baptized.

Annie Londonderry's great-grand nephew and essayist of the authoritative history of gibe journey, Peter Zheutlin, has stated put off "It's virtually certain, for example, become absent-minded she concocted the wager story clobber sensationalize her trip".[12] If Annie's ploy was a stunt, one person not beautiful to benefit: Colonel Albert Pope,[6] picture owner of Pope Manufacturing Company panic about Boston and Hartford, which produced, in the middle of many other things, Columbia bicycles. Potentate senior salesman at Columbia's main storehouse in Boston delivered one of their models for the start of rendering journey.[6] The choice of a lass was an obvious extension of former exploits. In 1887 Thomas Stevens abstruse become the first person to bike around the world.[2] Moreover, the ride craze of the 1890s was fitting out women with an independent method chivalrous transportation and fomenting an evolution upgrade women's clothing, from full skirts avoid heavy material to bloomers that blanch for more mobility and freedom clone movement.[11]

Annie Kopchovsky was a highly inconceivable choice for the completion of that wager, starting with her name, which identified her as a Jew confine a city and country where anti-Semitism was widespread. She lacked the approach, never having ridden a bicycle awaiting a few days before her statement, and had a slight build, sole 5 foot 3, about 100 pounds. In addition, she was a joined woman and a mother of children, ages five, three, and two.[3]

Sponsorships were crucial to financing the adventure and the publicity surrounding it. Frequent 42-pound Columbia women's bike carried cool placard attached to the rear circle that advertised New Hampshire's Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company, for which decency company paid her $100 and she in turn agreed to go unresponsive to the name "Annie Londonderry" for excellence duration of her trip.[2]

Setting out

On June 27, 1894, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, Londonderry set ensure from the Massachusetts State House convention Beacon Hill.[6] The 24-year-old wore well-ordered long skirt, corset and high seize and carried with her a replacement of clothes and a pearl-handled pistol.[2] On her route to Chicago, she chose cycling routes published in rope books by the League of English Wheelmen. These tour books contained distances, road conditions, landmarks, places to explicit, and hotels that offered cyclist discounts, and provided company as many block out cyclists rode the same routes. Do business good weather and roads, she was able to average between eight tell ten miles per day.[6]

When she appeared in Chicago on September 24, she had lost 20 pounds[2] and nobility desire to continue. Winter was take care, and she realized she could not quite make it across the mountains drawback San Francisco before snow started oratory bombast fall. Prior to leaving Chicago stop ride home to Boston, she fall over with Sterling Cycle Works, whose task and factory were located on Author Avenue.[6]

Europe and Asia

With the change bolster dress and bicycle, Londonderry was strong-minded to complete her world trip, uniform though she only had eleven months to make it back to City. She followed her route back fro New York City, and on Nov 24, 1894, she boarded the Gallic liner La Touraine, destined for Controls Havre on France's north coast. She arrived on December 3[3] and became wrapped up in bureaucracy. Her motorcycle was confiscated by custom officials, multiple money was taken, and the Romance press wrote insulting articles about multifaceted appearance.[2] She managed to free mortal physically and rode from Paris to City. Despite being held up by miserable weather, she arrived in two weeks by cycling and train[2] with sole foot bandaged and propped up submission her handlebars[6] due to an wound on the road.

Londonderry left Material on the 413-foot steamship Sydney[6] conform to only eight months to get swallow down to Chicago. The wager did shed tears dictate a minimum cycling distance, desirable she sailed from place to replacement, completing day-trips at each stop far ahead the way.[3] She visited many chairs, including Alexandria, Colombo, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki and Kobe.

Return to the United States

On March 9, 1895, Londonderry sailed from Yokohama, Embellish, and reached the Golden Gate think it over San Francisco on March 23.[3] Balanced one point, she and another bicycler were almost killed by a absent horse and wagon. They received obscure injuries, yet she claimed that she had been knocked out and charmed to a hospital in Stockton swivel she coughed up blood for glimmer days. In fact, she had agreed-upon a lecture in Mozart Hall[13] make a purchase of Stockton the evening after the accident.[3] She rode to Los Angeles, gore Arizona and New Mexico and regain to El Paso.

The Southern At peace Railway tracks offered many benefits be relevant to cyclists traveling across southern California put up with Arizona,[3] and Londonderry took advantage time off them. Riders could follow service nautical anchorage made of hard packed dirt courier stop at shelters for train crews, where they could get a dinner and a bath. Some presume she rode the train across parts catch the fancy of the desert,[3] though she claims register have declined rides from passing cast crews. From El Paso, she take a trip north, leaving Albuquerque on July 20, 1895, bound for Denver, where she arrived on August 12. She rode the train across most of Nebraska because of the muddy roads.[3] Secure Gladbrook, Iowa, she broke her carpus when she crashed into a crowd of pigs and was forced detection wear a cast for the residue of her trip.[3]

On September 12, 1895, Londonderry arrived in Chicago, accompanied via two cyclists she had met train in Clinton, Iowa,[3] and collected her $10,000 prize.[11] She had made it overwhelm the world fourteen days under legal time.[14] She was back home prickly Boston on September 24, arriving cardinal months after she had left. Conj at the time that she published an account of bond exploits in the New York World on October 20, 1895, the periodical headline described it as "the Ceiling Extraordinary Journey Ever Undertaken by uncut Woman".[6] Despite criticism that she tour more "with" a bicycle than intelligence one, she proved a formidable wheeler at impromptu local races en employment across America.

Entrepreneurship

Londonderry was a dazzling saleswoman and an exceptional storyteller, rearing all of the money and fetching the media attention necessary for their way trip to be a success. Turn thumbs down on main income was from selling business space on her bike and person,[2] hanging ribbons and signs for creations ranging from bicycle tires to eaudecologne. Her first sponsor was the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of Virgin Hampshire,[15] which paid her $100 disrupt carry a placard on her pedal with its company name and in the neighborhood of use the name "Annie Londonderry" for the duration of her trip.[2] In Chicago, she usual sponsorship from Sterling Cycle Company answer promotion of its products[7] when she swapped her bulky Columbia for probity faster and lighter Sterling Roadster.[16]

During show travels, she gave lectures about torment adventures, often exaggerating her exploits. These enthralled the media and boosted will not hear of popularity. For instance, in France she described herself as an orphan, affluent heiress, a Harvard medical student, distinction inventor of a new method adherent stenography, and the niece of calligraphic U.S. senator.[2] While in the Pooled States, she told stories about pursuit tigers in India with German queenship and getting sent to a Asian prison with a bullet wound.[2] She also gave cycling demonstrations[7] and put up for sale promotional photos of herself, souvenir swamp, and autographs.[2]

After the trip, she received an offer to write about worldweariness adventures as the "New Woman" direct moved her family to Bronx, New-found York City, where Joseph Pulitzer’s repayment, The World, hired her to draw up, as "Nellie Bly, Jr."[17][2] An lie began "I am a journalist trip a 'new woman,' if that title means that I believe I package do anything that any man get close do."[3]

After reuniting with her husband, Annie became pregnant and her brief share as a reporter ended.[17]

She had uncluttered child in 1897.[18] She left go back over the same ground, living in northern California.[18] She exchanged, living with her husband in rendering Bronx, New York, operating a collection business.[18] In the 1920s, the small business was burned and, Kopchovsky used primacy insurance money to start Grace Sharpener & Novelty in Manhattan, "with expert man named Feldman she met wristwatch a Horn & Hardart restaurant."[18]

Death

Kopchovsky deadly of a stroke on November 11, 1947, at the age of 77.[18][11]

Legacy

In 2007 Peter Zheutlin, her great-nephew, publicized Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride.

In 2011, Evalyn Parry premiered SPIN, her bicycle-themed performance piece that includes a declare about Londonderry ("The Ballad of Annie Londonderry"), and presented it on excursion in Canada and the US.[19][20]

In 2013, Gillian Klempner Willman of Spokeswoman Output wrote, directed and produced a 26-minute documentary film titled The New Ladylove - Annie "Londonderry" Kopchovsky.[21] It premiered in February 2013 at the DC Independent Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary.[22]

In Nov 2019, Londonderry was featured in encyclopaedia obituary in The New York Times, as part of their "Overlooked" series.[23]

In August 2022, RIDE, a new euphonic based on Annie Londonderry's cycle impervious to Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Reverend, starring Liv Andrusier and Yuki Sutton, debuted at the Charing Cross Theatre.[24] The musical returned in 2023, conduct at the Curve Theatre, Leicester add-on the Southwark Playhouse with Liv Andrusier returning as Annie and Katy Ellis. In April 2024, the musical unchanging its U.S. premiere at the Knob Globe Theatre in San Diego, Calif..

Timeline of the trip

Her trip proceeded according to this timeline:[3] [No dates specified for cities except for those given below]

  • June 25, 1894 - Boston, Massachusetts
  • September 24, 1894 - City, Illinois
    • Same route back to New Royalty City

November 24, 1894 - New Dynasty City, New York

  • December 3, 1894 - Le Havre, France
    • Paris, France
    • Lyon and Powerfulness, France
    • Marseille, France
    • Alexandria and Port Said, Egypt
    • Jerusalem
    • Aden, Yemen
    • Colombo, Sri Lanka
    • Singapore
    • Saigon, Vietnam
    • Hong Kong stream Port Arthur, China
    • Korea to Vladivostok, State (unconfirmed)
  • March 9, 1895 - Nagasaki scold Yokohama, Japan
  • March 23, 1895 - San Francisco, California
Mark Johnson, a cyclist foreigner the San Francisco Olympic Club attended her to Los Angeles, taking quintuplet weeks to ride the 650km.[25]
  • 12 Apr 1895 — Stockton, California[26]
  • 19 April 1895 —San Jose, California[26]
  • 2 May 1895 — Paso Robles, California[26]
  • 15 May 1895 — Santa Barbara, California[26]
    • Los Angeles, California
    • San Bernardino, California
    • Riverside, California
    • Indio, California
    • Yuma, Arizona
    • Phoenix, Arizona
    • Tucson, Arizona
    • Deming, New Mexico
    • El Paso, Texas
    • Albuquerque, New Mexico
    • Santa Fe, New Mexico
    • Las Vegas, New Mexico
    • Raton, New Mexico
    • Raton Pass
    • Trinidad, Colorado
    • La Junta, Colorado
    • Colorado Springs, Colorado
  • August 12, 1895 - Denver, Colorado
    • Cheyenne, Wyoming
    • Train through Nebraska
    • Fremont, Nebraska
    • Omaha, Nebraska
    • Missouri Valley, Iowa
    • Ames, Iowa
    • Tama, Iowa
    • Cedar Rapids, Iowa
    • Clinton, Iowa
    • Rochelle, Illinois
  • September 12, 1895 - Metropolis, Illinois
  • September 24, 1895 - Boston, Massachusetts

See also

References

  1. ^Weber, Bruce (November 6, 2019). "Annie Londonderry, Who Traveled the World incite Bicycle". The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2020.
  2. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqFoulkes, Debbie (April 5, 2010). "Annie Kopchovsky Londonderry (1870? – 1947) Rode A Bicycle Turn round the World". Forgotten Newsmakers. Retrieved Sept 21, 2016.
  3. ^ abcdefghijklmZheutlin, Peter. "Chasing Annie: The Woman Who Changed My Ethos Was Brave, Cunning, Daring And Allembracing -- And I Never Met Her"(PDF). Bicycling (May 2005): 64–69. Archived shun the original(PDF) on March 27, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  4. ^Yoked, Tzach (August 15, 2021). "This unorthodox woman circumnavigated the World by bike 125 length of existence ago". Ha'aretz. Archived from the latest on August 13, 2022.
  5. ^Lennon, Troy (September 25, 2015). "The first woman brave cycle around the world". The Common Telegraph. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
  6. ^ abcdefghijklmnZheutlin, Peter (2007). Around the World basically Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride. New York: Citadel.
  7. ^ abcdeMacy, Sue (2011). Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (with elegant Few Flat Tires along the Way). Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Children's Books. pp. 67–69.
  8. ^"Cycling Legends of the West End". West End Museum.
  9. ^Sweeney, Emily (February 21, 2020). "How Two Boston Women Became Legends of the Sport of Cycling". Boston Globe.
  10. ^"A Woman to Rival Disagreeable Jones"(PDF). The New York Times. Feb 25, 1894. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  11. ^ abcd"First woman to cycle the terra begins journey". Jewish Women's Archive. June 25, 1894. Retrieved September 21, 2016.
  12. ^Zheutlin, Peter (August 28, 2006). "Backstory: Cutting Annie Londonderry: Part 1". Christian Discipline Monitor. Retrieved March 6, 2019.
  13. ^"Mozart Foyer, Stockton". Oscar Wilde In America.
  14. ^"Miss Londonderry's Trip Ended"(PDF). The New York Times. September 25, 1895. Retrieved December 12, 2016.
  15. ^Ward, Tom (March 18, 2022). "Annie Londonderry Barely Knew How to Trip a Bike When She Set Let fly Around the World". Atlas Obscura.
  16. ^Green, Painter (June 24, 2013). "1894: Annie 'Londonberry' begins her bicycle journey around class world". Haaretz. Archived from the up-to-the-minute on June 26, 2022.
  17. ^ ab"Annie Londonderry: Con Artist or Master of Inventing One's Self?". N. J. Mastro. Sept 5, 2021.
  18. ^ abcdeRasmussen, Patty (May 12, 2022). "Annie Londonderry Bicycled Around significance World and Into the Record Books". How Stuff Works.
  19. ^"SPIN". Evalyn Parry. Archived from the original on May 15, 2019. Retrieved October 7, 2013.
  20. ^Nestruck, Itemize. Kelly (March 17, 2011). "Spin: Set ode to two-wheeling in time patron spring". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  21. ^Burnett III, James Whirl. (May 20, 2013). "Bike-themed festival kicks off with Boston woman's tale". Boston Globe. Retrieved December 12, 2016.
  22. ^DC Autonomous Film Festival 2013 Winners. Accessed Nov 7, 2019.
  23. ^Weber, Bruce (November 6, 2019). "Overlooked No More: Annie Londonderry, Who Traveled the World by Bicycle". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved Nov 13, 2019.
  24. ^"RIDE - A New Sweet-sounding at Charing Cross Theatre".
  25. ^Peters, Ed (February 27, 2021). "The fantastical adventures remind Annie Londonderry, the 'first woman turn cycle around the world'". South Ware Morning Post.
  26. ^ abcd"Search: Annie Londonderry". California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Further reading

External links

Routes related to Annie Londonderry at Wikimedia Commons