We recently traveled across our home state of Missouri from Kansas City to St. Louis to visit the Missouri History Museum. While it’s a fine museum, we were there for a specific reason: to do a live show about pioneering photojournalist, Jessie Tarbox Beals. We know that a lot of you would have loved to have been there to learn about this extraordinary woman, so we re-recorded the show in an audio-only format for you.
Jessie Richmond Tarbox was born on December 23, 1870, in Ontario, Canada. She was the fourth child of John Nathanial Tarbox and Marie Antoinette Bassett Tarbox. Jessie was born into wealth but grew up far differently after her father lost all his money and her mother asked him to leave. Jessie’s first career was as a teacher in Massachusetts, where she met and married Alfred Tennyson Beals when Jessie was 26.
While teaching, Jessie began to photograph on increasingly better equipment and, when she realized she was making more money during her summer, side hustle of photography, she and Alfred hit the road as itinerant photographers. During this phase of her life, she became the first woman photojournalist and the first woman staff photographer for a media outlet.
While Jessie would have a long career of photographing everything that she thought she could sell (and she sold a lot) from street photography to political commentary, to famous people and the homes of the wealthy- her big break into large circulation publications came when she worked and talked her way into being the official photographer for the publicity department at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair AND 1904 Summer Olympics.
Cue a montage of some of Jessie’s World’s Fair photographs!
While Jessie’s dream of photographing the world was limited to the countries and people represented at the fair, she was a professional photographer based out of New York City for most of the rest of her life. Jessie Tarbox Beals died on May 30, 1942, she was 71 years old.
It’s time for a final photo montage from her life after the fair:
Time Travel With The History Chicks
***Under Construction! Check back later for media recommendations, images, and a lot of glorious, cockamamie rabbit holery***
The Missouri History Museum’s new 1904 World’s Fair exhibit opens April 27th, if you can get to St. Louis, it’s worth the visit alone (and the rest of the museum is fantastic, too!)
There are quite a few lines on a tennis court; sideline, baseline, service line – all of which have their functions. But beginning in 1950, a powerful and charismatic African American athlete named Althea Gibson began to smash tennis’ color lines, one after another. Althea Gibson broke new ground and changed the world’s perception of what was possible in the world of sports.
All media recommendations will be on the shownotes for Part Two.
On paper, Alice Roosevelt’s life reads like a typical young society woman: Debut at 17, travel, friends, parties, marriage to a wealthy and important man, and eventually, motherhood. But Alice’s life was far from typical. For starters, her travel was for official United States goodwill missions, her friends were some of the wealthiest in the world, and the parties were expensive balls where “Be Naughty” seemed to be her rule of the day. She smoked, she bet on horses, she flirted and rode around in cars with men…and America, and soon the world, LOVED her!
When it came to marriage, Alice chose Representative Nicholas Longworth from Ohio, a wealthy respected, and charming man who loved his drink and women–including ones that were not his wife. They did have a very public, Power Couple life hobbing and nobbing with influential politicians, and Alice- with her quick wit and intelligence became so important to the government- without ever holding an office- that she earned the nickname, Washington’s Other Monument.
In this episode, we continue with the story not only of the life of Alice, or Mrs. L as she came to be called, but also continue to take a good look at the most influential man in her life, her father, President Theodore Roosevelt. It’s really a two-fer!
Alice Roosevelt Longsworth died after a very long, very influential, and very unconventional life at her home in Washington, DC on February 20, 1980. She is buried with her daughter, Paulina Sturm, at Rock Creek Cemetary in Washington, D.C.
Time Travel With The History Chicks
Books!
Web!
If you find yourself near Long Island, NY, head on over to the Roosevelt summer estate, Sagamore Hill (the one that should have been named Leeholm until Alice’s mother died.) Tours are limited and by reservation, so plan ahead.
The scripted, historical drama, Crowded Hours, is an Amazon Original starring Emma Roberts as Alice! Does HBO Max still have the television series based on Alice’s life in production? We don’t know, but we are hoping really hard that it’s true!
Join us on our Field Trip to Paris in October of 2024! For information and to register, visit Like Minds Travel. We hope to see you there!
President Theodore Roosevelt had many challenges during his career… corruption in the New York police force, the creation of the Panama Canal, the Spanish-American war, protecting the Grand Canyon and other national monuments, and groundbreaking anti-trust legislation…but the greatest challenge he faced was a volcano in a blue dress, his eldest daughter – flouter of convention, spicy of demeanor, and perhaps the world’s first media superstar who admirers across the world came to call America’s “Princess Alice.”
Time Travel With The History Chicks
Sources and media recommendations will be on the shownotes for Part Two
Break music: Haper Active, A Fork Where A Fork Don’t Fit
In the early 1500s in Mesoamerica, modern-day Mexico, a very young child who would come to be known as La Malinche was sold into slavery by her own family. Through a series of curious circumstances, she began working as a translator and cultural interpreter for Hernán Cortés and became one of the most famous (or infamous) characters in the story of Spain’s conquest of Mexico. For the most part, we have to look at the details of her life through the lives of the people around her, then turn our heads sideways and squint because how she is seen, depends on the angle of your, or historians, view. Even her name is shrouded in mystery: was she Malintzin, Malina, Marina, Doña Marina, or La Malinche? She was called all of those, but her true, original name is lost to history.
SHOWNOTES ARE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, COME BACK LATER FOR ALL OF OUR MEDIA RECOMMENDATIONS
Time Travel With The History Chicks
Books!
KIDS:
Web!
The Denver Art Museum had an exhibition of Malinche’s life through art back in 2022, but since nothing dies on the internet, we can all still cyber-visit it! Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche
The murals at Palacio National in Mexico City: Here’s some information about Malinche’s portion and here’s a good look to grasp the size of this art!
Moving or Audible Pictures!
The Rest is History Podcast has an (entertaining and conversational as well as educational) series on the Fall of the Aztecs that goes into depth on Cortes and his conquest of Mexico (and Malinche is in there, of course!)
End music: End of the Story by The Spoons, used with permission