Scope and Contents

This collection consists of two 4 by 4 inch leather bound autograph books, and includes autographs from the following aviators: Lady Heath, Clarence Chamberlain, Roger Williams, Howard Hughes, Elinor Smith, Frank Hawks, George Haldeman, Edith Keating, Horace B. Wild, Marchesa Theodora Marconi, Noble Estey, Laura Ingalls, Casey Jones, W. N. Lancaster, Amelia Earhart, Orville Wright, Charles Holman, Will Rogers, Wiley Post, James Mollison, Amy [Johnson] Mollison, Jimmie Mattern, Charles Kingsford-Smith, Arthur Goebel, Ruth Elder, Clema Granger, Lincoln Ellsworth, Berndt Balchen, Clyde Pangborn, Roscoe Turner, Jimmy Doolittle, Benjamin Foulois, Hap Arnold, Dick Konter, Richard Byrd, Ryotaro Kumakawa, Frank Miller, K. McGinnis, Dick Merrill, Igor Sikorsky, Charles E. Rosendahl, Eddie Rickenbacker, Italo Balbo, P.F. M. Fellowes, Ernie Smith, C. C. Mosely, Ruth Nichols, Lee Ya-Ching, and Jeanette Piccard. News clippings and small photographs of the specific aviator are sometimes placed on the page adjoining the autograph. The books also include two event ribbons, one from the Minneapolis Airport Dedication, September 19, 1930, and one from the Aero Club of Minneapolis Field Day, June 12, 1921.

Biographical / Historical

Mabel Vernet Perkins (circa 1880 - circa 1950) was born in California to William and Sarah Perkins. Shortly after Perkins' birth, her family moved to Minnesota where her father was a successful businessman. By 1920 Mabel Perkins was attending aviation events and become a member of the Aero Club of Minneapolis. During the 1920s through the early 1940s, Perkins collected aviator autographs, mostly from fairs and barnstorming events in the Midwest. She also collected autographs in Miami in 1933, at the New York Word's Fair in 1939, and in Los Angeles and Riverside, California