Mrs. Grayson was born to A. J.
Wilson and his wife in Cherokee City, Arkansas. She graduated from Muncie High
School in Indiana and went to the Chicago Musical College where she was to
study music in order that she could be an accompanist for her brother who is
said to have been an excellent singer. When her brother died at a young age she
gave up music and found herself at Swarthmore College studying recitation and
dramatic art. While at Swarthmore, she met John Brady Grayson whom she married
on September 15, 1914. Mr. Grayson was a postmaster in Warrenton, Virginia and
was twenty years older than Frances. They had no children and after nine years
of marriage they were divorced. Soon thereafter Frances moved to New York City
where she was initially a writer for a newspaper syndicate. She gave this up
for a successful career in real estate. Along the way she became interested in
aviation. She was inspired by the Lindbergh flight to Paris in May of 1927 and
soon resolved to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic.
She placed a deposit on the
construction of a new Sikorsky amphibian plane for this purpose and enlisted further
financial aid for the venture from Mrs. Aage Ancker, a daughter of Pittsburgh
steel manufacturer Charles H. Sang. On
the evening of December 23, 1927 she left from Curtis Field in New York for
Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. From there she was planning to make the historic
transatlantic flight to London, possibly on Christmas day. The plane, known as
the Dawn was to be flown by a very experienced aviator Lieutenant Oskar Omdal
of the Norwegian Navy, though Frances was to have taken some turns at the controls.
In addition to Frances, the crew included a navigator, Brice Goldsborough and a
radio engineer, Mr. Frank Koehler.
Sadly, they never reached Newfoundland and despite reports of radio
messages were never found. Frances was the fifth woman to fail to achieve the
transatlantic flight, which was ultimately accomplished by Amelia Earhart in
1928, who was exclusively a passenger at that time.
Frances was an unsung hero of the
woman’s movement and left no doubt about it. She gave a personal statement to a
reporter in October of 1927 that was only to be printed in the event she was
lost in her eventual transatlantic attempt. In it she begins: “Who am I? Sometimes I wonder. Am I a little nobody? Or
am I a great dynamic force-powerful- in that I have a god-given birthright and
have all the power there is if only I will understand and use it?” In another statement she reportedly said-“I
am going to be the first woman across the Atlantic, and mine the only ship
since Lindbergh’s to reach its destination. I will prove that woman can compete
with man in his own undertakings.”
