Mary Dixon Kies
Mary Dixon Kies was the first woman to apply for and receive a U.S. patent in her own name. Her patent, issued May 5, 1809, was for an innovative process of weaving straw with silk. This technique was quickly adopted by the New England hat-making industry, and it was widely used for a decade.
Kies was born in South Killingly, Connecticut, in 1752. Her father was an Irish immigrant from the Province of Ulster, and like many settlers of this era, he was a farmer.
During the Napoleonic Wars, between 1803 and 1815, the U.S. placed an embargo on all trade with France and Great Britain, and this resulted in a greater need for American-made hats using local materials, taking the place of the European imports that had been available previously. In turn, the nation’s straw-weaving industry grew drastically, and Kies contributed to this growth with her invention of a new and useful improvement in weaving straw with silk or thread.
Kies' patent was one of only 20 issued to a woman before 1840. Unfortunately, her historic patent document was later destroyed in the United States Patent Office fire of 1836, when approximately 10,000 patent records were lost, along with hundreds of volumes of original drawings and notebooks.
Though little is known about the details of Kies’ life or her patent, historians believe her patent was related to “a technique to automate the weaving techniques employed by women at the time to produce hats in their homes, or some other improvement of the existing manual techniques.”
Applied primarily in creating women’s hats and bonnets, Kies’ patented technique was signed by President James Madison, and he and First Lady Dolley Madison praised the invention for its role in helping to improve New England's economic situation. It has been reported that the first lady personally wrote to Kies to congratulate her for helping women in industry. Thanks in part to Kies’ work, New England’s hat industry was one of the few industries that continued to prosper during the War of 1812.
As fashion trends changed, so did the demand for Kies’ weaving technique, and she struggled to maintain a steady income from her invention before she passed away in 1837.
In 1965, members of Connecticut’s Killingly Grange No. 112, a farmers’ association, built a monument in Kies’ birthplace dedicated to her memory as a remarkable woman who persistently made strides not only in fashion and industry but also in advancing our society. The monument honors her as the first woman to apply for and receive a U.S. patent.
Today, several samples of straw fabric woven with silk by Kies herself can be seen at the Danielson Public Library in Danielson, Connecticut. These samples were donated by Kies’ great-granddaughter, Delia Taylor. Other samples also have been displayed at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut.
As of 2019, nearly 13% of all patent-holding inventors in the U.S. are women, and hundreds of thousands of women apply for a U.S. patent each year — a number that has grown steadily since Kies’ lifetime.