Topic starter
15/01/2007 7:12 pm
I am looking for information about Minnie Hill....will take anything I can get!
Minnie Hill was the first certified woman steamboat pilot in the Northwest. She was on the water in the late 1800's piloting the Governor Newell. I am trying to learn what she went through to get that certification.
15/01/2007 7:57 pm
Dear Shannon:
Just clicked and read your posting Re: MINNIE HILL. Quickly pulled down WAY'S PACKET DIRECTORY along with WAY'S STEAM TOWBOAT DIRECTORY. There are 12 boats in the PACKET volume with the name MINNIE but, alas, no MINNIE HILL. There are 5 listed in the TOWBOAT DIRECTORY and the closes is the MINNIE WILLS, a 'rafter' steamer of 1877. Did you mean to type HILL or WILLS?
There are a lot keener eyes and minds on this web who could help. Don't take my final word. Hope you are successful in your quest.
Cheers,
R. Dale Flick
16/01/2007 10:58 pm
Shannon,
on p.144 in "The Rivermen", The Old West series (Time Life) there is a great picture and a few lines written about her.
You probably know it already?
-Bernd
16/01/2007 11:43 pm
Time Magazine, Monday March 3, 1941
Woman Skipper
Sirs:
Gotcha!
Apparently somebody's regional patriotism and/or laziness took charge of your article about Captain Mary Greene (TIME, Jan. 27).
"She's the only woman licensed as a navigator on U. S. inland waterways," or words to that erroneous effect. Tsk!
Mrs. Minnie Hill of Portland, Ore., was the first woman west of the Mississippi to be licensed by the U. S. Bureau of Marine Inspection & Navigation. She obtained her ticket in 1886, and for many years thereafter was master of the steamer Governor Newell on the Columbia River. . . .
Mrs. Lee R. Jensen, also of Portland, holds a limited ticket for the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.
Mrs. Lewis of Everett, Wash., Mrs. Wyman of Tacoma, and Mrs. Grimson of Seattle are all engaged hereabouts as masters of inland vessels. Mrs. Grimson is particularly noteworthy for her managership of freighting sternwheel steamers—the last of the once great Puget Sound fleet—after many years as skipper of same.
CASEY DAVISON
Marine Editor
The Tacoma Times
Tacoma, Wash.
> To Mrs. Minnie Hill, TIME'S apologies. Now 78, dignified, charming Mrs. Hill modestly deprecates her pilot past, turns down all radio offers, gets roiled when she is compared with Tugboat Annie. (Beams her proud husband, however: "Minnie, if you had a little more gall, you'd be in the movies.") Says Mrs. Hill of her "ancient history": "I never wore overalls, I wore skirts."
17/01/2007 1:13 pm
Hi, Bernd & Bruce:
Thanks for additional information for Shannon on Minnie Hill. I was alseep at the throttle and was looking for info on a boat named MINNIE HILL and not the person Minnie Hill...DUH! The TIME letter of March 3, 1941 is quite revealing and proves to us that, at times, history has more than a few surprises for us and a mind of its own.
Cheers,
R. Dale Flick