Absolutely! Elizabeth Banks, the re-headed Mystery Girl from Wisconsin. Turns out she was really from New Jersey where her mother Sarah Brister died and she was sent to live with her sister.
Why was she groundbreaking? Often studied in Women's studies as the Newspaper girl she broke into journalism when it was men only. Her first job they put her in the window with a typewriter for show. She went on to big things. Eventually she ended up in London with the Queen and helping the war effort. Here is just a sample:
Elizabeth L Banks
1870-July 18, 1938
"Newspaper Girl"
Sometimes I get extremely determined when I find someone interesting that I want to profile and yet can find little or nothing about them in order to give viewers of this website the information I want to give. Such is the case with Elizabeth L. Banks. I have found very little on her and yet I am 'antsy' to give you, the reader, SOMETHING.
Born in Taunton, New Jersey to John and Sarah (Brister) Banks, Elizabeth Banks has been eluding me for weeks. After a month of waiting, I finally received a call from my local library that they had indeed gotten in for me, her first autobiographical book, "The Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl." When I went to the library to claim my 'interlibrary loan,' I was thrilled to see the book in excellent condition and as I returned to my car
with it, I just had to take a moment to remove it from its plastic pouch to thumb through it. An hour later, I was still sitting there looking through this book, written in 1902, which was a First Edition, and for whatever reason, feeling shivers run up and down my spine and 'goose bumps' upon my legs and arms. This book has entranced me.
Now, on with the story of Ms. Banks. As said earlier, she was born in Taunton, NJ. Early childhood details seem to be unavailable. Apparently her family relocated while she was still in school, to Wisconsin. Her autobiography thru 1902 opens as she is leaving the family and going off to earn her own living. Often while preparing to go to the female seminary college of Milwaukee-Downer, she was reminded by relatives (she never mentions a mother and father) of the sacrifices they were making for her to get an education. She was told to give great care to her graduation gown, as it had been bought in the general store with a precious ten pounds of butter and eight dozen eggs.
What she wanted was to be a reporter. She was a self taught typist and stenographer who, after sending out many copies of résumé, was able to attain a job working for a grocer as a typist for only eight dollars a week.
She's been dubbed as one of the "Type-writer Girls." After complaining to the grocer and pointing out how she was being stared at in the window typing, he promptly dropped the curtain. She wrote an article titled "All about Typewriter Girls" and mailed it off to her local paper, where it was, on that Sunday, published. This resulted in a job working at a publication called the "Daily Hustler." She became a society reporter for papers in St. Paul and in Baltimore. Shortly thereafter as a result of one of her assignments, she met a man who acquired for her a position as Secretary for the American Minister to Peru in 1892. While there, she awoke at 5 AM to a great shaking of her bed, and heard people screaming through the streets to be saved.
Sure that it was "one of those South American Revolutions," she went immediately to her typewriter and typed a dispatch to be sent off to Washington---
"A Revolution broke out at five this morning and nobody knows what it is about. The streets run with blood, the populace cry out "Save us! Save us!" while the soldiers run them through with bayonets. The president of Peru will be beheaded and his head stuck up on the top of a pole in front of the Cathedral, as it is customary to treat Presidents during revolutions. All the staff and family of this Legation are safe. Will wire you again later."
A few minutes later, when the minister and staff came hunting her, she handed him the dispatch to be signed and sent, he became uproarious with laughter, and explained to her that what she had just witnessed was nothing more than an earthquake. She was embarrassed, but took it all in stride and also had a good time with it for many months to come.
Following that, she came back to the United States and worked for a short time before deciding to go to London. While there, in 1894, she wrote a series of articles entitled "The Almighty Dollar in London Society."