The Life of Emma Allison

The 1876 Centennial Exhibition Women's Pavilion Steam Engineer

Archive for May 2013

The Baxter Steam Engine with Flowers

Emma Allison was the engineer of a six horsepower Baxter steam engine. The engine itself is not generally mentioned in accounts of Emma’s work but this article, from Pacific Rural Press, Volume 12, Number 13, September23,  1876, gives a delightful description of how Emma decorated it. It also confirms that she spoke to people about moving to California after the Centennial.      

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Who was A.D. Marchand?

After a great talk at the 2013 Steampunk World’s Fair about Emma Allison and her fate, I thought more about the man she may have married later in life, A.D. Marchand. Someone in the audience had asked what I knew about him and to this point very little. But I have learned that if you keep doing the same search online, you can get different results because so much new […]

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