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Alice Bunce
1893-1970 Alice E. Bunce was the first African American woman to graduate from the New Jersey College of Pharmacy in Newark. However, she lived in Asbury Park at the time of graduation in 1927. She owned a pharmacy in Asbury Park for many years, opening it with her brother in 1923 and operating it until…
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Mildred Preen
1918 – 1979 Mildred Preen, graduate of West Side High in Newark was the first woman to graduate in Electrical Engineering at Newark College of Engineering, was an Assemblywoman (the first woman to do so in Hunterdon County), private pilot, and served with the WAVES in WWII. Mildred graduated Newark College of Engineering in 1938.…
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Mabel Irene Gilman
c. 1897?-1943 Miss Mabel Irene Gilman who lived on Clinton Ave., was the first female detective appointed by Essex County in 1929, investigating various cases including desertions. She attended Barringer High School, and lived in Newark from 1906. She was a member of the Alma House Missionary Society of Grace Church. In her youth, she…
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Mary Colson Woody
c. 1877-1966 Mary C. Woody became the first licensed female funeral director in NJ in Newark in 1913. She opened a funeral home that bears her name in Orange, which is open to this day. Mary was born in Virginia and moved to Washington DC and then Newark with her husband, where her husband established…
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Adelaide Wilson
1902-Unknown Adelaide Wilson was raised in Newark and worked as a reporter, as early as 1920, when she lived on Hawthorne Avenue. In 1921 and 1922 she hiked 10,000 miles to San Francisco & back. She became engaged to a rancher in Denver and worked with movie star Dorothy Dalton, among other adventures. As a…
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Miriam Studley
1899-1984 Miriam Van Arsdale Studley was the first director of the New Jersey room at the Newark Public Library from 1951-1966. She also ran the NJ collections from 1943, when Julia Sabine went to graduate school. That’s a total of 23 years in charge of the library’s New Jersey materials. Miriam Studley was born Jul…
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Geraldine “GiGi” Foushee
1947-1997 GiGi Foushee was a Newark police officer, county detective, first woman head of Newark’s ABC department, deputy mayor & first woman warden of Essex County Jail. She said, “I love Newark, it’s my home. I understand this city, it’s me.” Charles Cummings wrote, “In a few months short of 50 yrs she accomplished more…
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Gladys Barker Grauer
1923-2019 Gladys Grauer was a Newark artist called “Newark’s matriarch of the arts”, who launched the Aard Studio Gallery in Newark in 1971, on Bergen Street. She also was a commercial art teacher in the Vo-Tech schools for 15 years. Her work has been displayed locally and nationally. Gladys also ran for office with the…
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Mary C McKeon
1913-1997 Mary McKeon was the first woman president of the NJ Associations of Life Underwriters and the Newark-NJ Association of Life Underwriters. She was the first woman to be a division manager in Prudential Life insurance sales in 1952. She worked in Newark and Montclair. She said, “I was scared to death when I joined…
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Zelma Mitchell Collins
1930-2023 Zelma Collins was the first Black teacher at South 17th Street School in 1952 and rose to principal in 1973, the first Black principal. From 1986, she was principal of Clinton Ave., before retiring in 1996. She taught briefly at Oliver Street School before South 17th. She said, “I left a legacy…I gave it…