⛳0️⃣0️⃣6️⃣ Margaret Ives Abbott

Contributed by Professor Jean Williams

Margaret Abbott, via The Golfball Factory

Meet Margaret Abbott, the first American woman to win an Olympic event in the golf competition at the Paris Olympics of 1900. 

Born in Calcutta, India, Margaret Abbott was the daughter of  U.S. merchant Charles Abbott and his wife, Mary Perkins Ives. Charles died when Margaret was very young, and the family returned to the United States, initially to Boston, and then Chicago.  Mary supported the family by writing, served as literary editor of The Chicago Herald, and imparted her enjoyment of golf to her children Margaret took to the game, as did her brother Sprague, a Harvard student who sometimes played mixed fours contests with his sister as partner. As of 1897, Margaret was mainly coached by male amateurs at the Chicago Golf Club, in Wheaton, Illinois, an institution  formed in 1892 by Charles Blair Macdonald, a Scottish American who probably invited Mary to join soon after the club’s founding. Margaret’s height, five feet eleven, made her a natural for the long ball game, and she was fiercely competitive, with a two handicap. When she won local tournaments, her success was reported in the regional newspapers, and she achieved a degree of local celebrity. 

In 1899 Mary Abbott moved to Paris to research a new book project, A Woman’s Paris: A Handbook of Every-day (sic) Living in The French Capital, published by Small, Maynard the following year. Margaret joined her mother, studying art with impressionist painter Edgar Degas and sculptor Auguste Rodin, and languages. 

The Context

Golf was one of the upper and middle class international sports that attracted both men and women, giving them the chance to socialise in a relatively leisurely way, both on the course and in the club house. Like tennis and croquet in the later decades of the nineteenth century, joining an exclusive golf club was a marker of status and class. Golf was also similar to winter sports like ice skating in that it gave opportunities to wear the latest fashions and to be seen by contemporaries to have the conspicuous leisure to devote to amateur sports, although tournaments often rewarded cash prizes or valuables for the winners. At the time, Paris was the fashion capital of the world, and, because European royalty wore fashions for their outdoor pursuits, from hunting, to motor racing to golf and tennis, clothing for specific leisure pursuits was highly topical and expensive. 

The International Olympic Committee was formed at a congress, held in Paris in 1894. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in his capacity as secretary general of the Union of French Sports Associations convened the congress at the Sorbonne. The first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens, were therefore called a ‘revival’ of the ancient Olympics, and no women’s events were formally held. 

The 1900 Olympic Games were held in conjunction with the Paris Exposition, which was also known as a World’s Fair, thus there were sports events held over six months. The contemporary public were confused then about which events were Olympic competitions and historians today still disagree over certain sporting contests. Consequently, the number of women involved is disputed, considering which events were, or were not Olympic, but there is a broad consensus that there were at least 22, and maybe more. An international women’s golf tournament was held in Compiègne, 80 kilometres north of Paris, and on October 4 Margaret shot a round of 47 over nine holes to take the victory ahead of her compatriots Pauline Whittier, a student from Boston who studied in St Moritz (49), and Abigail Pratt, who was a member of the Dinard Golf Club with her husband, (53). The only mother-daughter pairing to compete in the same event to this day, Mary Abbott shot 65 to take seventh place. Margaret won a bowl as her prize, as medals were not issued in Paris, and thought the award was for the Prix de la Ville de Compeigne Championship, remaining unaware for the remainder of her life that she was an Olympic pioneer. 

Margaret remained in France for a time, and won the 1902 Femina Cup, a forerunner of the French Women’s Championship. She then returned to New York City with her husband, humourist Finley Peter Dunne, with whom she had four children, and continued to play golf socially. It was not until scholar Paula Welch of the University of Florida researched the story that the family became aware of Margaret’s achievements, long after her death in 1955 at age 76.  

The Sports Diplomacy Connection

Golf competitions in 1900 were examples of soft sports diplomacy, and very much society occasions, both in terms of competitors and spectators. It reminds us that there was an international set at the turn of the twentieth century who were connected by education, a sympathy for the arts, and who had the means to travel where they may because they had the private incomes to choose work that was intellectually satisfying and financially lucrative, rather than manual in nature. ‘Clubbability’ was a way of connecting and reinforcing social ties with those who were of the same social class, or preferably, above. 

Margaret attributed at least part of her victory in 1900 to the tight skirts and high heels of the French competitors, who seemed to be dressed more to be seen than to facilitate a good swing. France would continue to be important for sportswear, especially with the rise of Coco Chanel in the 1920s and 1930s. But the ‘American Look’ of easy to wear mixed separates would change the look of sportswear, internationally. There were twenty-five golf courses in France in 1900 plus ten private Riviera clubs at places like Deauville, so it was by no means unusual for cosmopolitan socialites like Margaret Abbott to follow the sun, away from Chicagoan winters, to take part in competitions as part of her wider arts education. 

But as a competitor representing the United States at the Paris Games, Abbott and her fellow female golfers represented the country. There were four such U.S. ‘steamboat’ socialites at the 1900 Olympics and six French competitors of equal social class or above mentioned by name in the official report, although it also says that there was a total field of 19 entries. Perhaps Mary Abbott was pleased to have taken seventh place from her social superior Baronness Lucile de Fain? Third place Abigail Pratt, married for the third time to Prince Alexis Karageorgevich of Serbia in 1913 in Paris, taking Daria as her royal name, reflecting these elite social circles.

Women would never again be excluded from the Olympic Games, appearing in more disciplines and sports, but women’s golf was not included again in the programme until the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. By 2016 golf was a global sport, for both men and women, reflected in 60 men and 60 women taking part in the Olympic competition in Brazil, and the medals table of the women’s event: Inbee Park of South Korean taking gold; Lydia Ko of New Zealand taking silver, and Shanshan Feng of China taking bronze. 

Mapping the Connection

From Chicago, Illinois to Paris, France

Further Reading

[E] Paula Welch ‘Searching for Margaret Abbott’ Olympic Review 1982 752-754

[E] Jean Williams British Women Olympians: A History (Routledge, 2020) 25-6.

[E] Rebecca Arnold The American Look: Fashion, Sportswear and the Image of Women in 1930s and 1940s New York (Bloomsbury, 2008).