Frances Wilson Grayson: Embracing Hope to Achieve Greatness

W. Frances Wilson, oldest child of Andrew J. and Minnie (Lewis) Wilson, was born in Cherokee City, Arkansas in 1888. Andrew was a trader and merchant, who with his family traveled through Indian Territory and Colorado. Around 1896 they settled in Muncie, Indiana, where they opened a grocery store. Frances, a gifted student, singer, and speaker, attended Chicago Music College, taught elocution in Muncie, then continued her education in recitation and drama at Swarthmore College, where it is believed she met John Brady Grayson, a grocer 17 years her senior.¹

The couple married in 1914 and settled in John’s hometown of Warrenton, Virginia. Frances Wilson Grayson headlined talks on women’s suffrage and performed public readings of plays in support of voting rights throughout the region. The marriage ended in divorce without children. By 1922 Frances, a self-described feminist who nevertheless retained her married surname, lived and worked in New York City, labeling herself first as an actress, then a newspaper correspondent, author, and real estate agent.

The Golden Age of Aviation

Aviation fever spiked following the Great War, with barnstormers giving airshows in towns across the globe alongside an increasing number of highly publicized races, feats, and failures. It exploded following the first successful solo trans-Atlantic flight by Charles Lindbergh in May 1927. Whether or not Frances already had an interest in aviation, she wasted no time in pursuing her new avocation with a passion. Bankrolled by fellow feminist Aage Ancker, Frances ordered a twin-engine Sikorsky S-36 seaplane and hired an experienced crew, determined to “do her bit for the credit of progressive womanhood.”¹

“Undaunted by the apparently disastrous outcome of the transocean flying ventures of Miss Mildred Doran and the Princess Lowenstein-Wortheim, another woman is preparing to essay a flight across the Atlantic.”²

Embracing Hope to Achieve Greatness

The Washington Evening Star of September 3, 1927 was typical of newspapers throughout the country that day. The headline “SEA HOP PLANNED BY THIRD WOMAN: Miss Frances Grayson Undaunted by Fate of Miss Doran and Flying Princess” appeared above Frances’ story beneath the fold, while seven other articles about aviation and aviators were scattered about the same page. Mildred Doran, a female Canadian flyer, had participated in a California to Hawaii air race about two weeks prior. She and her aircraft were missing and presumed lost. English-born socialite Princess Anne of Lowenstein-Worthheim-Freudenberg partook in a failed trans-Atlantic attempt in 1925, and on August 31, 1927 she was part of a second attempt. The above the fold headline on September 3 reads, “TWO SLENDER CLUES OFFER ONLY HOPE FOR PRINCESS’ PLANE.” The article ends, “pioneers in great enterprises always appear foolhardy, but it is those who embrace forlorn hopes who achieve great things.” Only later was it clear that Princess Anne and crew did indeed perish.

The Ancker-Grayson aircraft “Dawn” was completed at the Sikorsky factory on Long Island, New York on September 13, and after trials and publicity that included a possible alternate Seattle to Tokyo trans-Pacific flight, the crew initiated three separate trans-Atlantic attempts out of Old Orchard Beach, Maine in mid-October, each ending in disappointment. An October 7 Associated Press news article reported the U.S. Weather Bureau would discontinue special weather reports for over-ocean fliers. “This action is being taken because of the considerable cost involved and because of the improbability of favorable flying conditions over the North Atlantic before next spring.”

Undaunted

Frances’ American pilot reportedly quit after she pushed for a fourth try that year. Undaunted, Frances hired Oskar Omdal, who had previously participated in two endeavors to fly across the North Pole. On the late afternoon of December 23, 1927, Frances and her three airmen departed on their initial leg from Long Island to Newfoundland. Two hours later they were sighted near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. After two reported distress calls later that night, they were neither seen nor heard from again.

In June 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first female to fly across the Atlantic. Her pilot was Wilmer Stultz, the American flier who resigned as Frances Grayson’s lead aviator the previous autumn. Earhart performed a number of other firsts before becoming the first woman to solo across the Atlantic in May 1932.

Something Worthwhile

“Who am I?”, Frances Wilson Grayson is said to have written. “Sometimes I wonder. Am I a little nobody? Or am I a great dynamic force -powerful- in that I have a God-given birthright and have all the power there is if only I will understand and use it?” In a letter to her family in Indiana Frances wrote, “I would rather give my life in attempting something big and worthwhile than to live longer and do less.”

¹ Flook, Chris, “Bygone Muncie: Frances Wilson Grayson’s Transatlantic Attempt of 1927,” Muncie Star-Press, 6 Jan 2019

² “Sea Hop Planned,” Washington Evening Star via AP, September 3, 1927