Amelia Earhart’s Minnesota roots: St. Paul school days, Worthington summers and Northwest Airways

ST. PAUL — Before Amelia Earhart became an internationally known pilot, she was a teenager attending Central High School and living with her family in St. Paul. Her Minnesota story includes an earlier connection to Worthington and a later role in the development of Northwest Airways. The school connection is documented in the Minnesota Historical Society’s Central High School collection, which identifies her as a junior during 1913–1914. Minnesota Historical Society.

Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897. Her family’s moves took her through Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois. St. Paul was one chapter in that unsettled childhood, rather than her birthplace or the place where she learned to fly. Her first airplane ride and flying lessons came years afterward in California. Kansas Historical Society; PBS timeline.

Historian Lisa Heinrich’s account for the Ramsey County Historical Society says the family spent four summers at Lake Okabena in Worthington while her father was prospering in railroad work. Her childhood connection to Minnesota therefore extended beyond St. Paul. Ramsey County Historical Society.

Edwin Earhart’s drinking and employment problems disrupted the family’s finances. A clerk’s job with the Great Northern Railway brought them to St. Paul in 1913. They rented at 825 Fairmount Avenue in Summit Hill, but heated only a couple of rooms during cold weather to save money. Ramsey County Historical Society.

In FOX 9’s reporting, Heinrich described how even a small hospital bill created difficulties for the family. Amelia and her younger sister, Muriel, improvised Easter clothing by reworking older garments and raising money from bottles found in the cellar. Such accounts come through later recollections and biographies, rather than a diary documenting every day of their Minnesota stay. They describe financial hardship alongside the more familiar public image of the confident aviator. FOX 9.

Amelia and Muriel attended Central’s recently opened building at Marshall Avenue and Lexington Parkway, designed by Clarence H. Johnston Sr. Amelia later completed high school in Chicago; she was a former Central student rather than a Central graduate. Ramsey County Historical Society.

FOX 9’s interviews describe her as a capable student whose strongest subject was German. Her social life also included St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, where she sang in the choir and helped with altar work. The church offered friendships and activities outside a home affected by her father’s drinking. The recollections include ordinary teenage moments, such as talking and giggling with a friend during services. FOX 9.

Basketball participation is reported in biographies, but a 2023 Star Tribune review found no confirmation in Central’s 1914 yearbook. Review.

The surviving archive helps distinguish documented attendance from stories repeated much later. MNHS lists five items of Earhart correspondence from 1955–1956, including exchanges between author Jack Pitman and Central principal William J. Scanlan, staff memoranda and librarian Laurie C. Johnson’s recollections. The collection also includes newspaper clippings from the 1930s. These records demonstrate how the school reconstructed memories of its famous former pupil decades after she attended. MNHS collection inventory.

Her aviation career developed after she left Minnesota. PBS dates her first airplane ride to December 28, 1920, and her first lesson with Neta Snook to January 3, 1921. In June 1928, Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane as a passenger. On May 20–21, 1932, she made the solo Atlantic crossing that established a different achievement: the first woman to fly that route alone. Keeping those flights separate avoids treating the 1928 crossing as a solo flight. PBS.

Her adult career brought another Minnesota connection through Northwest Airways. The Northwest Airlines History Center identifies Earhart in a photograph of a January 1933 Ford Tri-Motor trip scouting the route between the Twin Cities and Seattle. The photograph also identifies pilots Joe Kimm and Hugh Rueschenberg and operations officer Mal Freeburg. The center’s timeline records Northwest’s expansion across Montana and into Washington that year, culminating in service to Seattle and Tacoma in December. Northwest Airlines History Center.

That connection links Earhart to Minnesota’s commercial aviation history as well as its schools and neighborhoods. MNHS’s separate Northwest Airlines collection lists Earhart-related correspondence dated March 9, July 16 and November 12, 1933, offering another archival trail for researchers studying her relationship with the carrier. Northwest Airlines records at MNHS.

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, while attempting to reach Howland Island during her around-the-world flight. Her Minnesota years came long before that final journey. The surviving local record preserves a more specific story: childhood summers in Worthington, a difficult period on Fairmount Avenue, a year at Central, church friendships, and a later return to the region’s aviation world. PBS.

Historical photo: Amelia Earhart, circa 1928, Underwood & Underwood / Library of Congress. The portrait was taken after her Minnesota school years. The Library of Congress catalog lists no known restrictions on publication; digital reproduction via PBS.