Restoring The Brick And Mortar Of The Original Factory Has Led To Another Story About The People Working In The Factory

An effort to gather the stories of Wright Company factory workers has uncovered information about one of the first women in the world to work in the aircraft industry. We all know the stories of “Rosie the Riveter” from World War ll, but what about ‘Ida the Seamstress’ from 1910?

Ida Holdgreve, born in Delphos, Ohio in 1881, worked as a seamstress for the Wright Company in Dayton from 1910 to about 1915, according to information provided by a distant cousin. She sewed the surfaces for the company’s wood-and-fabric airplanes.

The job made Holdgreve a pioneer aircraft manufacturing worker in the first American factory built for the purpose of producing airplanes. She and her co-workers were the first Americans hired and trained for specialized aircraft manufacturing jobs.

Holdgreve’s story has resurfaced with the help of Theodore (Ted) Clark of Beavercreek, Ohio. He was the first respondent to the Wright Factory Families project, a joint effort by the National Aviation Heritage Alliance (NAHA) and Wright State Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives to find descendants of Wright Company workers and preserve their stories.

Clark, 78, said Holdgreve was one of his mother’s cousins. His family also lived in Delphos, but Holdgreve moved to Dayton early in her life while Clark’s family remained. Holdgreve’s work for the Wright brothers was known in the family, “but nobody made a big deal about it,” he said.

Clark brought a folder of old news clippings about Holdgreve to Dawne Dewey, head of Special Collections and Archives at Wright State. Articles about Holdgreve appeared in Delphos and Dayton-area newspapers from 1969 through 1975. She died in 1977 at age 95. Never married, she left no direct descendants.

Dewey said information about Wright Company workers like Holdgreve “adds to the human side of the story” about the company. “It makes these people come alive, and that’s what this hunt for family members of the Wright Company workers is all about,” he said.

Holdgreve answered a Wright Company newspaper ad for a seamstress in 1910, according to the articles. Wilbur and Orville formed the company in November 1909.

An article in the Nov. 20, 1969 Dayton Daily News quoted her as saying she first worked for Wilbur and Orville “in a little room in Edgemont.” The Wright Company initially occupied an unused part of the Speedwell Motor Car Company plant in Dayton’s Edgemont neighborhood while its own plant was under construction.

The company moved into the first building of its own factory in late 1910. “I sewed cloth for the wings, stabilizers, rudders, fins and, I don’t know what all,” Holdgreve said in the Nov. 21, 1969 Dayton Journal Herald.

Orville sold the Wright Company in 1915, but news reports indicate Holdgreve continued sewing for airplanes. A 1975 Delphos Herald article indicates that during World War I, she supervised women sewing fabric for military planes at the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company in Moraine.
 
Holdgreve was a momentary celebrity in November 1969 when she took her first airplane ride at age 88. Local news media covered the flight, and newspapers around the country picked it up from wire services. Much of what is known about her now comes from those news reports.

(Image of Ida Holdgreve courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University. 1910 Wright Model B replica photo from file)

FMI: www.aviationheritagearea.org