Mary Webb Nicholson: Blazing Sky Trails
Walter R. Turner
EDITOR’S NOTE: After Peace Corps service anil an initial career in social work, Walter R. Turner, a
fifth-generation North Carolinian, transitioned to historian at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in
Spencer, N.C., in 2000. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Methodist College (now Methodist
University) in Fayetteville, and a Master of Social Work degree from the University if North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. His specialties are streetcar systems, commercial aviation, and interstate highway history. Turner is
the author «/Paving Tobacco Road: A Century of Progress by the North Carolina Department of
Transportation, published by the Historical Publications Section in 2003. He has written articles for the
North Carolina Historical Review, Our State, and Business North Carolina.
Mary Webb Nicholson was North Carolina’s first licensed female pilot. During a col¬
orful career, she flew in air shows across the state in the 1930s, worked closely with prom¬
inent aviatrix Jackie Cochran in New Y ork City, and served as one of only twenty-five
American women pilots for the British Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II.
“She had a love and passion for flying,” said her niece, Mary Nicholson Walton.1
Mary’s mother, the former Frances Cole, grew up in Granville County and graduated
from the State Normal and Industrial College (later North Carolina College for Women
and now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro). Francis Herbert Nicholson,
her father, was raised in Belvidere, near Hertford, and attended Brown University in
Providence, Rhode Island. He worked as assistant cashier at the American Exchange Bank
in Greensboro.
Mary' was born in Greensboro on July 12, 1905. Her brother Herbert followed in
1908 and Frank in 1910. The growing Nicholson family moved in 1911 from near down¬
town to a large, newly built house at 2400 Walker Avenue, on the western edge of
Greensboro, only a few blocks from the city’s streetcar line. More boys were born —
Harold in 1914 and David in 1923. The family was Quaker and attended Friends Church
on Asheboro Street.
As a middle-class child, Mary took music lessons and enjoyed entertaining friends on
the family’s piano. Her parents, especially her mother, imposed discipline, which Mary
resisted at times. “Mary' was very outgoing, bubbling over, and never met anybody she
didn’t like,” recalled her brother, Frank. She walked to nearby schools and graduated from
Pomona High School in 1922. Mary' attended Quaker-sponsored Guilford College, a few
miles west of Greensboro, living in a dormitory for two years, then transferred to North
Carolina College for Women in Greensboro.
During this period, Mary met Harris Preston Pearson while he was visiting his aunt,
who lived next door to the Nicholsons. Harris, whose family lived in Bennettsville, South
Carolina, attended Bailey Military Institute in Greenwood, then earned degrees at the
College of Charleston and Medical College of South Carolina. Mary (age twenty) and
Harris (age thirty) were married on June 17, 1925, at Friends Church.
After a honeymoon in New York, the Pearsons established a home in Portsmouth,
Ohio, east of Cincinnati on the Ohio River, where Harris practiced medicine. Mary
started a new phase of her life — as a young doctor’s wife and housewife adjusting to a new
city. The couple had no children. In a few years, Mary' initiated divorce proceedings and
petitioned for the right to reclaim her maiden name. The divorce was finalized on July 17,
1928. She never married again.
In the meantime, Mary Nicholson was becoming interested in aviation. On
May 20-21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh made a solo flight from New York to Paris, bringing
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