Women's History Month 2004
Mar. 6th, 2004 03:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sff_corgi_ljAnnie Smith Peck
"Nothing to mountaineering, just a little physical endurance, a good deal of brains, lots of practice, and plenty of warm clothing."
Fearless mountain climber and writer, Annie Smith Peck (1850-1935) was born October 19 in Rhode Island to a wealthy Providence family -- the youngest of five children of George B. Peck and Ann Power Smith Peck.
She enrolled at the University of Michigan -- which had only opened its doors to women for the first time in 1870 -- and completed a four-year course of study in three years, graduating with honors in 1878 with a major in Greek and classical languages. She immediately continued on to earn a master's degree in Greek, which she completed in 1881. With her A.M. in hand, she accepted a position as a professor of Latin and elocution at Purdue University, one of the first women in the United States to attain such a rank. After a two-year sojourn in Europe, during which she was the first woman student at the American School of Classical Studies in Greece, she returned to the U.S. and accepted a teaching position at Smith College. By 1892, she was well-known enough to support herself through public lectures, and resigned her position at Smith.
At the age of forty-four, she took up mountaineering after a college professor told her that women couldn't do it. "I thought I could help the cause by doing what one woman might to show the equality of the sexes," Smith Peck wrote. Show them she did. For a time, Smith Peck held the American altitude record.
In 1881, the renowned climber and writer A.F. Mummery stated that all mountains are doomed to pass three stages as they are explored and conquered. " ...an inaccessible peak, the most difficult ascent in the Alps, and an easy day for a lady."
Fascinated by the Matterhorn, she climbed it in 1895. Her courage and audacity jolted the popular views of Victorian society. Two years later, she became the first woman to reach the summit of Mexico's Pico de Orizaba. Peck reached a higher point on this hemisphere than has yet been attained by any North or South American man or woman when she climbed to 21812 feet on Mt. Huascaran, Peru Sept. 2, 1908. In 1911, upon reaching the 21,834-foot North Summit of Mt. Coropuna, also in Peru, the adventurer raised a "Votes for Women" pennant.
The flag wasn't the only fabric that Peck caused trouble with on the climb. She wore pants, not the skirt that women were expected to wear in the mountains. For her ascent of Huascaran, she designed her own mountain shoes and had them made to her order since available climbing equipment was designed for men, ungainly and ill-fitting.
Back in the United States, Smith Peck responded to The New York Times' coverage of her climb with an angry letter. "I have climbed 1,500 feet higher than any man in the United States," she wrote. "Don't call me a woman climber."
Indeed, the title was then an insult, a slap at both the climber and the climb.
Male climbers found female climbers vexing. "'The Grepon has disappeared,' said Etienne Bruhl, sadly, quoted in Miriam O'Brien Underhill's autobiography "Give Me The Hills.". 'Of course,' he admitted, 'there are still some rocks standing there, but as a climb it no longer exists. Now that it has been done by women alone, no self-respecting man can undertake it. A pity, too, because it used to be a very good climb.'"
That animosity toward women climbers waned over the 20th century.
A 1916 newspaper story about Peck called her "Queen of the Climbers" for her successful climb of Bolivia's Mount Sorata at 25,000 feet above sea level, the first time anyone had reached its summit. At that time, Peck was one of only three women to have reached the summit of the Matterhorn and the "only woman that ever climbed the Funffinger Spitze, the most dangerous rock climb in all Europe where a slip from a two-inch rock ledge meant a sheer fall of 2,000 feet." Peck accomplished these feats in dress highly unorthodox for women at the time. As the 1916 newspaper account says, "Miss Peck in all her mountain climbing discards skirts. She wears knickerbockers or loose bloomers." The fact that her climbing clothes merited as much attention as her accomplishments is highly amusing for 21st-century readers.
She was almost 80 when airlines began transporting passengers. Ready for a new adventure, Peck undertook a seven-month journey, mostly by airplane, across South America. When she returned to New York, she wrote and published Flying over South America: Twenty Thousand Miles by Air. The year was 1932.3
The remarkable Peck climbed her last peak at age 82, the 5,363-foot Mt. Madison in New Hampshire. Annie Smith Peck died in New York on July 18, 1935 after a short illness; she was cremated, and her ashes were interred at Providence's North Burial Ground. 4
"Although one is not inclined to be timid or nervous, it is nevertheless a trifle depressing to receive letters full of expostulation and entreaty: 'If you are determined to commit suicide, why not come home and do so in a quiet lady-like manner?'"
- Annie Smith Peck (July 1896) 5
1 http://www.dailycelebrations.com/101901.htm
2 http://courant.ctnow.com/projects/nepal/story1a.stm
3 http://www.loe.org/series/discovery_women/peck.php
4 http://www.ric.edu/rpotter/smithpeck.html
5 http://www.womenclimbing.com/climb/quotes.asp
"Nothing to mountaineering, just a little physical endurance, a good deal of brains, lots of practice, and plenty of warm clothing."
Fearless mountain climber and writer, Annie Smith Peck (1850-1935) was born October 19 in Rhode Island to a wealthy Providence family -- the youngest of five children of George B. Peck and Ann Power Smith Peck.
She enrolled at the University of Michigan -- which had only opened its doors to women for the first time in 1870 -- and completed a four-year course of study in three years, graduating with honors in 1878 with a major in Greek and classical languages. She immediately continued on to earn a master's degree in Greek, which she completed in 1881. With her A.M. in hand, she accepted a position as a professor of Latin and elocution at Purdue University, one of the first women in the United States to attain such a rank. After a two-year sojourn in Europe, during which she was the first woman student at the American School of Classical Studies in Greece, she returned to the U.S. and accepted a teaching position at Smith College. By 1892, she was well-known enough to support herself through public lectures, and resigned her position at Smith.
At the age of forty-four, she took up mountaineering after a college professor told her that women couldn't do it. "I thought I could help the cause by doing what one woman might to show the equality of the sexes," Smith Peck wrote. Show them she did. For a time, Smith Peck held the American altitude record.
In 1881, the renowned climber and writer A.F. Mummery stated that all mountains are doomed to pass three stages as they are explored and conquered. " ...an inaccessible peak, the most difficult ascent in the Alps, and an easy day for a lady."
Fascinated by the Matterhorn, she climbed it in 1895. Her courage and audacity jolted the popular views of Victorian society. Two years later, she became the first woman to reach the summit of Mexico's Pico de Orizaba. Peck reached a higher point on this hemisphere than has yet been attained by any North or South American man or woman when she climbed to 21812 feet on Mt. Huascaran, Peru Sept. 2, 1908. In 1911, upon reaching the 21,834-foot North Summit of Mt. Coropuna, also in Peru, the adventurer raised a "Votes for Women" pennant.
The flag wasn't the only fabric that Peck caused trouble with on the climb. She wore pants, not the skirt that women were expected to wear in the mountains. For her ascent of Huascaran, she designed her own mountain shoes and had them made to her order since available climbing equipment was designed for men, ungainly and ill-fitting.
Back in the United States, Smith Peck responded to The New York Times' coverage of her climb with an angry letter. "I have climbed 1,500 feet higher than any man in the United States," she wrote. "Don't call me a woman climber."
Indeed, the title was then an insult, a slap at both the climber and the climb.
Male climbers found female climbers vexing. "'The Grepon has disappeared,' said Etienne Bruhl, sadly, quoted in Miriam O'Brien Underhill's autobiography "Give Me The Hills.". 'Of course,' he admitted, 'there are still some rocks standing there, but as a climb it no longer exists. Now that it has been done by women alone, no self-respecting man can undertake it. A pity, too, because it used to be a very good climb.'"
That animosity toward women climbers waned over the 20th century.
A 1916 newspaper story about Peck called her "Queen of the Climbers" for her successful climb of Bolivia's Mount Sorata at 25,000 feet above sea level, the first time anyone had reached its summit. At that time, Peck was one of only three women to have reached the summit of the Matterhorn and the "only woman that ever climbed the Funffinger Spitze, the most dangerous rock climb in all Europe where a slip from a two-inch rock ledge meant a sheer fall of 2,000 feet." Peck accomplished these feats in dress highly unorthodox for women at the time. As the 1916 newspaper account says, "Miss Peck in all her mountain climbing discards skirts. She wears knickerbockers or loose bloomers." The fact that her climbing clothes merited as much attention as her accomplishments is highly amusing for 21st-century readers.
She was almost 80 when airlines began transporting passengers. Ready for a new adventure, Peck undertook a seven-month journey, mostly by airplane, across South America. When she returned to New York, she wrote and published Flying over South America: Twenty Thousand Miles by Air. The year was 1932.3
The remarkable Peck climbed her last peak at age 82, the 5,363-foot Mt. Madison in New Hampshire. Annie Smith Peck died in New York on July 18, 1935 after a short illness; she was cremated, and her ashes were interred at Providence's North Burial Ground. 4
"Although one is not inclined to be timid or nervous, it is nevertheless a trifle depressing to receive letters full of expostulation and entreaty: 'If you are determined to commit suicide, why not come home and do so in a quiet lady-like manner?'"
- Annie Smith Peck (July 1896) 5
1 http://www.dailycelebrations.com/101901.htm
2 http://courant.ctnow.com/projects/nepal/story1a.stm
3 http://www.loe.org/series/discovery_women/peck.php
4 http://www.ric.edu/rpotter/smithpeck.html
5 http://www.womenclimbing.com/climb/quotes.asp
