03/30/2026
For our final post during Women’s History Month, we’d like to share some insight into what women were driving in the early 1900s.
Electric cars are often referenced when discussing women in the early age of the automobile. These cars were often marketed to women for their ease of use and maintenance. Electric cars were also efficient for daily outings within the city, whether that was going shopping or for a social visit. In contrast, gasoline or steam vehicles were exceptionally dirty and hard to operate, even for men. Some difficulty was done away with the invention of the electric starter in 1912, which eliminated the need to hand-crank the engine to start it. However, when we look at a list of automobile registrations in New York from 1911, we see that there were many women with cars, and not just electric ones.
While many of the women on this list were wealthy, not all of them owned luxury automobiles. Of the 638 entries, the majority are gas-powered automobiles. There are 323 entries that are automobiles with over 30 horsepower, compared to most electric cars which topped out at around 5 horsepower. There are 36 women with more than one auto registered to them, the most being 6 registered to Mrs. John Rogers of Oyster Bay, NY.
Some interesting women who appear on this list may be familiar to readers. Mrs. Grace Wilcox, a resident of Buffalo, had two Pierce-Arrow cars registered to her, one with 48hp and one with 28hp. Ironically, the family’s electric car, a 2.5hp Babcock Electric, was registered to her husband, Mr. Ansley Wilcox. The Wilcox mansion is now the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site on Delaware Ave. in Buffalo. Another Buffalo resident, Josephine T. Goodyear, wife of Frank H. Goodyear, owned a 66hp Pierce-Arrow car.
More prominent women on the list include Florence A.V. Twombly. Florence was an heiress to the famed Vanderbilt dynasty. At the age of 57 when this list was published in the New York Evening Post, she reportedly had 5 automobiles registered in her name (3 Mercedes and 2 Renault), ranging from 19hp to 40 hp. Another famous name on the list is Ernestine Schumann-Heink, an internationally-famous opera singer. Madame Heink, as she is listed, owned a 40hp Packard.
The link below leads to a spreadsheet created by our museum staff, which lists all the women reported to have automobiles registered to them in New York, published by the New York Evening Post in 1911.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1scj4NH44gjH9Vk0issESyqOHjbopFjh8zzcDdNkj9JI/edit?usp=sharing
Seen below are photos of Grace Wilcox, Josephine Goodyear, Florence Twombly, and Ernestine Heink. To see cars similar to what these women may have driven, come see our displays of electric automobiles as well as our luxury Pierce-Arrows! The museum will be open Friday, April 3 and Saturday, April 4 from 11am to 4pm.
