Amelia Earhart Net Worth

Background and career

Amelia Mary Earhart ( AIR-hart; born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviator who became one of the most celebrated aviation pioneers.

In 1928, Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane. In 1932, she became the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for her achievement. She was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization for women pilots.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in a twin-engine Lockheed Model 10 Electra while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Since her disappearance, Earhart has become a global cultural figure and numerous films, documentaries, and books have recounted her life.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas, the daughter of Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1867–1930) and Amelia "Amy" Earhart (née Otis; 1869–1962). She was born in the home of her maternal grandfather Alfred Gideon Otis (1827–1912), who was a former judge in Kansas, the president of Atchison Savings Bank, and a leading resident of the town. Earhart was the second child of the marriage after a stillbirth in August 1896. She was of part German descent. Alfred had not initially favored the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin's progress as a lawyer.

Following family custom, Earhart was named after her two grandmothers, Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton. From an early age, she was the dominant sibling, while her sister Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), two years her junior, acted as a dutiful follower. Earhart was nicknamed "Meeley" and sometimes "Millie", and Grace was nicknamed "Pidge." Both continued to answer to their childhood nicknames into adulthood. Their upbringing was unconventional; Amy did not believe in raising her children to be "nice little girls". Their maternal grandmother disapproved of the bloomers they wore, and although Earhart liked the freedom of movement they provided, she was aware that the neighborhood girls wore dresses.

The Earhart children had a spirit of adventure and explored their neighborhood daily. As a child, Earhart spent hours playing with Pidge, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle, and sledding downhill. Some biographers have characterized her as a tomboy. The girls kept worms, moths, katydids, and a tree toad in a growing collection. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Earhart constructed a homemade ramp modeled after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis, Missouri, and secured it to the roof of the family tool shed. After her first documented "flight", she emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, a torn dress, and a "sensation of exhilaration", saying, "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!"

In 1907, Edwin's job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. The following year, at the age of 10, Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Her father tried to interest his daughters in taking a flight, but after looking at the rickety "flivver", Earhart asked if they could return to the merry‑go‑round. She later described the biplane as "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting".

Earhart and her sister remained with their grandparents in Atchison while their parents moved into new, smaller quarters in Des Moines. During this period, the girls received homeschooling from their mother and a governess. Earhart later said she was "exceedingly fond of reading" and spent many hours in the large family library. In 1909, when the family was reunited in Des Moines, the sisters were enrolled in public school for the first time, and Earhart, 12, entered seventh grade.

The Earhart family's finances appeared to improved with the acquisition of a new house and the hiring of two servants, but it soon became clear that Edwin was an alcoholic. In 1914, he was forced to retire. He attempted to rehabilitate himself through treatment, but the Rock Island Railroad never reinstated him. At about this time, Earhart's maternal grandmother died. She left a substantial estate and placed her daughter's share in a trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would exhaust the funds. The Otis house was auctioned along with its contents, and Earhart later described these events as the end of her childhood.

In 1915, after a long search, Edwin found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Earhart entered Central High School as a junior. Edwin applied for a transfer to Springfield, Missouri, in 1915, but the current claims officer reconsidered his retirement and demanded his job back, leaving Edwin unemployed. Amy took her children to Chicago, where they lived with friends. Earhart canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science program. She rejected the high school nearest her home, complaining that the chemistry lab was "just like a kitchen sink". She eventually enrolled in Hyde Park High School but spent a miserable semester, for which a yearbook caption noted: "A.E.—the girl in brown who walks alone".

Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1916. Throughout her childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career. She kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in male-dominated careers, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering. She began junior college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania, but did not complete her program.

During Christmas vacation in 1917, Earhart visited her sister in Toronto, Canada, where she saw wounded soldiers returning from World War I. After receiving training as a nurse's aide from the Red Cross, Earhart began working with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital, where her duties included food preparation for patients with special diets and handing out prescribed medication in the hospital's dispensary. There, she heard stories from military pilots and developed an interest in flying.

In 1918, when the 1918 Flu Pandemic reached Toronto, Earhart was engaged in nursing duties that included night shifts at Spadina Military Hospital. In early November that year, she became infected and was hospitalized for pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis. She was discharged in December 1918, about two months later. Her sinus-related symptoms included pain and pressure around one eye and copious mucus drainage through the nostrils and throat. During her stay in the hospital in the pre-antibiotic era, Earhart underwent painful minor operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus, but these procedures were not successful and her headaches worsened. Her convalescence lasted nearly a year, which she spent at her sister's home in Northampton, Massachusetts. She passed the time reading poetry, learning to play the banjo, and studying mechanics. Chronic sinusitis significantly affected Earhart's flying and other activities in later life, and she sometimes wore a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.

By 1919, Earhart prepared to enter Smith College, where her sister was a student, but she changed her mind and enrolled in a course of medical studies and other programs at Columbia University. She quit her studies a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California.

In the early 1920s, Earhart and a young woman friend visited an air fair held in conjunction with the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto; she said, "The interest, aroused in me, in Toronto, led me to all the air circuses in the vicinity." One of the highlights of the day was a flying exhibition put on by a World War I ace. The pilot saw Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dived at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,' " she said. Earhart stood her ground as the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by."

On December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father attended an "aerial meet" at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California. She asked her father to inquire about passenger flights and flying lessons. Earhart was booked for a passenger flight the following day at Emory Roger's Field, at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. A 10-minute flight with Frank Hawks, who later gained fame as an air racer, cost $10 (equivalent to $160 in 2025). The ride with Hawks changed Earhart's life; she said, "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground ... I knew I had to fly."

The next month, Earhart engaged Neta Snook to be her flying instructor. The initial contract was for 12 hours of instruction for $500 (equivalent to $9,000 in 2025). Working at a variety of jobs, including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company, Earhart saved $1,000 (equivalent to $18,000 in 2025) for flying lessons; she had her first lesson on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard and Tweedy Road, now in the city of South Gate. Snook used a crash-salvaged Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" airplane she had restored for training. To reach the airfield, Earhart had to take a bus then walk four miles (6.4 km). Earhart's mother provided part of the $1,000 "stake" against her "better judgement". Earhart cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers. Six months later, in mid 1921 and against Snook's advice, Earhart purchased a secondhand, chromium yellow Kinner Airster biplane, which she nicknamed "The Canary". After her first successful solo landing, she bought a new leather flying coat. Because the coat looked new, she was teased, so she aged it by sleeping in it and staining it with aircraft oil.

On October 22, 1922, Earhart flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 m), setting a world record for female pilots. On May 16, 1923, she became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot's license (#6017) by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).

Financial problems and move to Massachusetts

Throughout the early 1920s, following a disastrous investment in a failed gypsum mine, Earhart's inheritance from her grandmother, which her mother was administering, steadily diminished until it was exhausted. Consequently, with no immediate prospect of recouping her investment in flying, Earhart sold the Canary and a second Kinner and bought a yellow Kissel Gold Bug "Speedster", a two-seat automobile she named "Yellow Peril". At the same time, pain from her old sinus problem worsened, and in early 1924, she was hospitalized for another sinus operation, which was again unsuccessful. She tried a number of ventures, including setting up a photography company.

Following her parents' divorce in 1924, Earhart drove her mother in "Yellow Peril" on a transcontinental trip from California with stops throughout the western United States and northward to Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Their journey ended in Boston, Massachusetts, where Earhart underwent another, more successful sinus operation. After recuperation, she returned to Columbia University for several months but was forced to abandon her studies and any further plans for enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), because her mother could no longer afford the tuition fees and associated costs.

In 1925, Earhart found employment first as a teacher and then as a social worker at Denison House, a Boston settlement house. At this time, she lived in Medford, Massachusetts.

While living in Medford, she maintained her interest in aviation, becoming a member of the American Aeronautical Society's Boston chapter and eventually being elected its vice president. She flew out of Dennison Airport in Quincy, helped finance the airport's operation by investing a small sum of money, and in 1927, she flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport.