Women Motorcyclists Defying Exclusionary Social Conventions, Archive of Sixteen Vernacular Photographs, c. 1910 to 1969

Women Motorcyclists Photo Archive

Photograph

Women motorcyclists photo archive, circa 1910 through 1969, documenting women riders across five decades when they remained a small minority in motorcycling and were largely excluded from the clubs, publicity, and historical narratives that defined the culture as a male domain. In 1915 Effie Hotchkiss and her mother Avis became the first women to cross the United States by motorcycle and sidecar, and in 1916 Augusta and Adeline Van Buren completed a 5,500 mile crossing on separate Indian motorcycles to demonstrate women’s fitness as military dispatch riders. SFO Museum The Motor Maids, founded in 1940 with 51 charter members and sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association in 1941, formalized a community whose membership required women to own and operate motorcycles.

Photo archive of 16 silver gelatin photographs, ranging from 2.5 x 3.5 to 3.5 x 5 inches, c. 1910s through 1969. The earliest images show women handling motorcycles while dressed in the long skirts, high collars, stockings, and brimmed hats of the period: one woman in a white dress sits astride an early machine in a residential yard; another group crowds around a Harley Davidson with sidecar; and a second Harley Davidson portrait shows a woman at the handlebars with a companion seated in the sidecar. Later photographs carry the subject through several generations of machines and dress, including a woman in a tailored suit riding on a paved road, another seated on a black sidecar motorcycle in a rustic yard, a woman posed against a painted scenic backdrop, and riders in trousers, shorts, and sleeveless clothing on postwar motorcycles. Two photographs identify machines or locations through visible registrations, “MC 3008” and “W 61.018,” while another shows a Honda beside a convertible automobile. One print is edge dated “Oct 1969,” another is captioned “Anita-Dot-Jody,” and a partially obscured verso inscription appears to read “Indian 45 - 37.” Across the group, women are most often shown in the operator’s position, hands on the handlebars and seated to ride, with sidecars, passengers, domestic yards, roadside settings, and recreational poses extending the record beyond formal portraiture into the everyday social use of motorcycles.

The archive spans a period in which women riders repeatedly used motorcycling to establish public mobility, endurance, and mechanical competence. The Hotchkiss crossing of 1915 and the Van Buren sisters’ ride of 1916 occurred before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and made motorcycle operation part of broader contemporary arguments over women’s independence and civic capacity; the Van Burens explicitly proposed that women could serve as military dispatch riders. SFO Museum In 1938 Linda Dugeau began seeking out women who owned and rode their own motorcycles, work that produced the 51 charter members of the Motor Maids in 1940, with Dot Robinson serving as the organization’s first president for twenty five years. Motor Maids Inc. The photographs trace the corresponding change in everyday presentation: the earliest women mount motorcycles while retaining the long skirts and formal dress expected in public portraiture, while the postwar riders appear in suburban yards, on roads, and beside automobiles with motorcycles treated increasingly as personal transportation and recreation. Light to moderate surface wear and toning, with occasional fading and adhesive or album paper residue to at least two versos; one print with a small edge loss. Overall in good condition.

Item #23906

Price: $1,485.00