Abstract:
Georgia Thompson Brown of Granville County was a pioneer of aviation. Better known as Tiny Broadwick, she made her mark not by flying airplanes, but by parachuting from them. Broadwick saw her first parachute jumper at a circus, and from that moment, she wanted to do nothing else in life but be a jumper. Her first jump was from a hot air balloon in 1908 at the North Carolina State Fair. In 1913, she became the first woman to parachute from a plane and the first to jump from a hydroplane. Between 1908 and 1922, she made over 1,000 jumps. She received the John Glenn Medal in 1964, and in 1976, she was inducted into the OX5 Hall of Fame, along with the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh.