Margaret “Peggy” Abbott picked up her putter to tap in her last shot of her round at the “Prix de la Ville de Compiègne” (translation: International Golf Competition at Compiègne). It was a beautiful October day in 1900 and Peggy was enjoying the chance to spend it doing the sport she loved. She and her mom, Mary, had traveled the 30 miles to Compiègne from Paris, where they were living while on a sabbatical from their lives in Chicago. Both of them had entered the tournament, which was being held in conjunction with the 1900 World’s Fair and Olympic Games, both of which had been going on in Paris all summer.

It had been a fun round of golf. There were 10 players on the course being followed by a loud and enthusiastic crowd, including some French nobility. Some of the crowd got so close to the golfers that they had to change their shots! Peggy attracted a lot of attention because she was so tall for a woman of her time at 5’11”. But even with the distraction of the spectators, the beautiful surroundings helped Peggy stay relaxed, which allowed her to focus on her game. Her drives were long and accurate, her iron shots were low and fast, and, as always, her putting was top notch.

Peggy shot a 47 for the 9 holes, which was good enough to stay at the top of the leaderboard. Peggy won the tournament by two strokes over Pauline Whitter, an American who was studying in Switzerland. Third place went to Daria Huger Pratt, an American vacationing in France, who shot a 53. Peggy’s mom finished 7^th with a 65.

What Peggy didn’t realize is that she had just won the Women’s Olympics Golf Championship. The tournament hadn’t specifically stated that it was part of the Games. although it was listed on the official Olympic program. When the French government had assigned Olympic and World Fair responsibilities to the Paris Exposition Company, the politics got complicated. The end result was an unorganized Olympic Games, as various events planned for the World’s Fair were designated over the summer and fall as Olympic competition. There were no uniforms, publicity, or recognition by American Olympic Committee for most events.

When Peggy won, there was no gold medal (or silver, or bronze!). Instead, Olympics organizers awarded medal winners valuable pieces of art or historical artifacts. Peggy was given an old Saxon porcelain bowl surrounded by chiseled gold. She never knew that she was the first American woman to win a gold medal in any sport! Back home, the Chicago Tribune reported her victory, but not in the sports pages…on the society page.

Peggy traveled 200 miles to Dinard, a coastal village in northwest France, a few weeks later for the French Golf Championships. Many of the French entrants approached the match like a party and dressed up in narrow skirts and high heels. Peggy, in a skirt and shoes that allowed more stability and freedom of movement, came away with the victory. When she told the stories of her golf championships to her kids years later, she always said that she was more proud of her win at the Compiègne “city” tournament than the French Championship because the competition was tougher and more international. She was right – although it was only after her death that the U.S. Olympic Committee realized she was a gold medal winner and added her name to its roster of athletes.

The Power of the Wand

Golf returned to the Olympics in 1904, but only as a men’s event. After that it was off the calendar for both genders until Rio in 2016. Margaret was the featured athlete in the official Olympics program for the 1996 Athens Summer Games, honoring the Centennial.

At the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics, the USA celebrated its first women’s golf gold medal winner since Peggy – 23 year old Nelly Korda. Nelly has been golfing since she was old enough to hold a club and broke onto the golf scene when she qualified for the Women’s U.S. Open Golf Championship the week before her 15^th birthday. Nelly’s next challenge is the 2021 Solheim Cup – the biannual golf battle between Team USA and Team Europe – taking place over Labor Day weekend. Nelly is leading Team USA.

Her Yellow Brick Road

The dawn of the 20^th century was an exciting time in Paris. The World Fair was coming to town, along with the 1900 Olympic Games. The World Fair was a celebration of technology and culture which cities around the world had been taking turns hosting for decades. The Olympics had just been reintroduced for modern times, with Athens hosting the first one in 1896. Paris added its own flair to both events – calling the World Fair became the Exposition Universelle and the Olympics were the Championnats Internationaux.

The push for a modern Olympic Games had been headed by a French government official, Baron Pierre Coubertin, and he made sure that Paris was the choice for the second Games. However, the Baron also fought to exclude women because the original Greek games didn’t allow it, and he believed it was undignified for women to compete in public athletic events. There were many in France who believed that athletic women destroyed their “feminine charm” and that letting women play sports previously reserved for men feminized them and made them less impressive. In Athens 1896, women weren’t allowed to compete or attend the competitions as spectators.

Since there was so much going on in Paris, the Olympic Committee decided to combine the Games with the World Fair. They opened May 20 and closed on October 28 with no specific ceremonies. Various events and tournaments already planned for the Fair were designated as Olympic competition. And the restrictions on women were loosened, which allowed them to participate in “appropriate” events like golf, tennis, yachting, croquet and equestrian. Even with the new rules, only about 2% of the approximately 1000 athletes were women.

Peggy and her mom, Mary, had moved to Paris in 1899 for a three year stay to immerse themselves in art and literature. Paris was bustling with excitement as the city prepared to host the 1900 Olympic Games. Mary, an author and book reviewer by trade, decided to spend her time exploring and writing a Paris travel guide for women (she called it A Woman’s Paris).  Peggy was more interested in painting and studied under some very famous artists, including Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, and Pierre Renoir.

Summer in Paris was hot and Peggy was feeling restless. So when she saw an advertisement in the newspaper for an amateur nine-hole golf tournament hosted by the Paris World Fair in nearby Compiègne, she convinced her mom that they two of them should enter it.

Brains, Heart & Courage 

Peggy’s parents moved from Massachusetts to Calcutta, India before she was born. Her dad, Charles, managed an export/import business while her mom, Mary, wrote novels. It was an era when society preferred boys to girls – when Mary was pregnant, her friends gave her gifts “meant for a prince.”  When Mary gave birth to a girl, her friends requested she return the gifts! Mary didn’t mind, as she was thrilled with her new baby, whom she named Margaret and nicknamed Peggy. When Peggy’s little brother was born a year later, Mary got to keep the gifts!

Peggy’s dad died when she was only 3, her brother Charles 2, and her mom about to give birth to her third child (another boy). Once the new baby was old enough to safely travel, Mary moved her family back to Boston, and found work writing essays and book reviews for newspapers. When Peggy was 8, Mary moved the family to Chicago to write book reviews for the Chicago Tribune newspapers. Soon afterward, the he then the editors of the Chicago Times-Herald recruited Mary to be the paper’s literary editor. Mary got to know many of the city’s society families through her work.  

When their family was looking for a new activity to do together, they turned to the nearby Chicago Golf Club. Golf was relatively new to the United States – the Chicago Golf Club course was the first 18 hole golf course in North America – so the community of golfers was small. One of the top amateur golfers in the country, Charles Blair MacDonald, had gone to college in golf’s birthplace: Scotland. When he returned to Chicago, he wanted to keep playing. So he founded the Club, designed its course, and served as a teaching pro. Peggy and her family took lessons from him and another top amateur, H.J. Whigam. Women were not allowed to join the Club themselves, but could play the course during lessons or if sponsored by a male member. When the women were on the course, they had to be accompanied by a chaperone, appropriately dressed, and stop play if they started to sweat.

Peggy loved the game and spent as much free time as she could at the Club. She worked her way to a 2 handicap (meaning that she had the ability to golf only 2 shots over par for 18 holes) and started entering and winning womens’ tournaments. Her unusual height for a teenage girl of her era – 5’11” – helped her develop an easy long swing that carried the ball far. On the golf course, it didn’t matter how tall she was, unlike in Chicago society, where it wasn’t as valued. The Chicago Tribune even featured her in an article: “The Tall Girl Problem: How Will Chicago Society Solve It?”

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Just the Facts

• Margaret was born on June 5, 1876 in Calcutta, India.
• Margaret and Mary are the only mother/daughter duo to ever compete in the same Olympic event at the same time.
• The lack of coordination in the 1900 Paris Olympics wasn’t limited to golf. Many track & field athletes didn’t know they were competing in the Olympics either.
• Margaret married writer Finley Peter Dunne on December 10, 1902 in New York. They had four children: Finley Peter Dunne Jr., Peggy Dunne, Leonard Dunne, and Phillip Dunne. They lived in n New York and then Greenwich.
• Margaret taught all four of her kids how to play golf. She continued playing until her late 60s, when her arthritis made it too painful to hold a club.
• Margaret died on June 10, 1955 in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was 76.
• A University of Florida sports history professor named Paula Welch was doing research on women Olympians and saw Margaret’s name on a plaque listing gold medalists at the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in New York City. Official report by Chicagoan A.G. Spalding, the Director of Sports for the United States at the Paris Exposition of 1900, She hadn’t heard of her before. She spent hours reading old newspaper clippings about Margaret. She discovered that Margaret should have been credited with being the first American woman gold medalist. It took her about 10 years (off and on) to track down Margaret’s family (in the days before the internet we weren’t that accessible!).

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