Travel has long been a way to escape our daily routines, to experience and learn about different countries, and to see new sights. Traveling provides the opportunity to observe the art, architecture, and history of different cultures. Historically, travel was a luxury largely reserved for the wealthy and more commonly associated with men.
Women were traditionally expected to maintain their homes and manage their households. If a woman was to travel, they were expected to be escorted by their husbands. It would have been very uncommon to see a woman traveling alone during the early years of the 20th century. Married women weren’t even issued their own passports in the early 1900s. Their husbands were issued a single passport that identified a woman as his wife. According to media historian Craig Robertson, “Whether she’s traveling alone in the name of her husband or whether she’s unmarried and traveling alone… in all situations, it represents something sort of outside of the norm.”
With the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920, women were permitted to vote and continued to redefine social expectations. More freedoms and an advancement of transportation allowed women to travel more easily. Skeptics still believed a woman’s place was in the home and that a woman’s extensive traveling habits could threaten social order and stability.
Despite widespread skepticism, many women defied this stigma and began to establish a new social norm of solo travel. Ida Pfeiffer is credited with being the first solo female travel writer, starting her travels in the year 1842 at the age of about 45. Her travels began with a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Pfeiffer’s husband was 24 years older than her and therefore unable to accompany her on her voyage. A trip to the Holy Land was a more socially acceptable reason for a woman to travel unaccompanied by a man. She then sailed to Egypt visiting Alexandria, Cairo, and the Red Sea before returning to Vienna. After her pilgrimage, she published her first book, A Vienna Woman’s Trip to the Holy Land. The publication of her book funded her second trip in 1845 to Scandinavia and Iceland. This trip became the subject of her second book, Trip to the Scandinavian North and the Island of Iceland.
Pfeiffer would later make two trips around the world, experiencing the jungles of Brazil, hunting in Singapore, exploring ancient cities of the Ottoman Empire, and witnessing the American goldrush. Her first trip around the globe lasted from 1846 to 1848 covering four continents and journeying through South America, China, India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece. She detailed the experiences of this solo trip in her third book, A Woman’s Journey Round the World.
Her second trip around the world began in 1851. This trip lasted twice as long as the first, journeying through Africa, Asia, and North and South America. She arrived back in Vienna in 1855 having studied cartography, geography, and geology on her travels. Her journeys culminated with the publishing of six books translated into seven different languages.
Women like Ida Pfeiffer helped pave the way for other women traveling the world alone. Isabella Bird, the first woman to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, traveled as a missionary in the Middle East. Annie Smith Peck became the first woman to climb the north peak of Huascaran in Peru in 1908. Fanny Bullock Workman followed in Peck’s footsteps and became the first professional woman mountaineer, spending much of her time exploring the glaciers of the Himalayan region.
Springfield native Nell Crane Milligan also disregarded any stigma about women traveling alone. Milligan was born in 1879 and married Alva D. Milligan, a successful grocer, in 1901. Upon Alva’s death in 1919, he left behind a sizable sum of money, which Milligan used to travel abroad with her niece and then later by herself.
Milligan began by traveling to Italy with her niece Marian who was studying abroad. Together they visited cities along the Italian coast. When Marian’s studies concluded, Milligan remained in Europe visiting countries such as Spain, Switzerland, and France. Her travels are documented by postcards and letters written to her from a series of admirers. In 1927, she boarded the Franconia in London for a voyage around the world with the Thomas Cook & Son Southern Hemisphere Cruise. On this solo tour, she visited Africa, Australia, and South America before returning to London. She often made trips back to Springfield to visit her family, and she was a frequent subject of interest on the Society page of the Springfield News-Leader. She later returned to Europe in 1962 and made her last trip abroad to Japan at the age of 90 in 1969. She moved from Springfield in 1969 to live with her niece in Kansas City where she died in 1975.
The Nell Milligan Collection consists of her postcards, letters, and other souvenirs from her travels around the world. They document her journeys exploring the globe and tell an important story of early solo women travelers. You can view her collection at the Library Center in the Local History and Genealogy department.
Blaze Your Own Trail
Are you feeling inspired to embark on your own adventure? The Library has plenty of reading material for your next plane ride. From modern memoirs and biographies of historic trailblazers to travel tips and passport services, we'll have you ready for the road in no time. Bon voyage!
Wander Woman: How to Reclaim Your Space, Find Your Voice, and Travel the World, Solo by Beth Santos
The Catch Me if You Can: One Woman's Journey to Every Country in the World by Jessica Nabongo
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery
Maiden Voyages: Magnificent Ocean Liners and the Women Who Traveled and Worked Aboard Them by Siân Evans