Emma Shaw Colcleugh 1846-1940

Beyond doubt, journalism was a male-dominated profession during Emma Shaw Colcleugh's 43-year tenure as a reporter for the Providence Journal. Perhaps she didn't notice, or if she did, she didn't let it prevent her from carving out a career as one of America's best travel writers, even though she didn't begin her career in journalism until she was 29 years old. And, even more remarkably, she combined her travel writing with the humdrum task of writing and editing a weekly column covering the news of Providence's women's clubs. The history of the Journal calls her "one of the most remarkable women ever to work for the Journal."

She was born Emma Shaw in Thompson, Connecticut. At the age of 18, in 1864, she became a teacher in Providence. This allowed her to travel in the summertime, and in 1875, planning a trip to Canada, she asked the Journal editors if they would publish articles she wrote about her travels. The newspaper agreed, and her freelance writing eventually led to a regular job.

Every summer while Colcleugh worked for the Journal, with the women's organizations presumably in a lull, she took a trip to some faraway land -- the Hawaiian Islands, Fiji, African countries, Cuba. From Cuba, she and fellow Journal women's reporter Sarah Hopkins wrote incisive articles about the poor conditions after the Spanish-American War. Her articles were syndicated in dozens of newspapers across the nation.

In 1888, on a trip to Canada, she met a widower, Frederick W. Colcleugh. They were married in 1893 and divorced in 1897. She kept his name after the divorce. In 1927, at the age of 81, she finally retired from the Journal and moved back to Connecticut, where she died at the age of 94. She was a woman long neglected by the historians of Rhode Island journalism. This award, it is hoped, will restore her to her proper luster