This week marks the anniversary of a remarkable morning. On November 14, 1889, a 25-year-old reporter named Nellie Bly boarded a steamship at Hoboken, New Jersey, and set out to travel around the entire world faster than anyone had before. But the courage it took to step onto that ship was formed years earlier, in a childhood that knew real loss.
A Family Knocked Off Its Feet
Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864, in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, had worked his way up from mill worker to mill owner and local judge. Life looked secure.
Then, when Elizabeth was about six, her father died suddenly without a will. According to the National Women’s History Museum, the family could not keep the house or land and had to leave. Her mother later remarried, but that marriage was an unhappy one and ended in divorce.
As a teenager, Elizabeth enrolled in a teachers’ school, but money ran out after a single term. She moved with her mother to Pittsburgh, where she found that even her less-educated brothers had more job opportunities than she did.
A Letter That Opened a Door
One day the Pittsburgh Dispatch ran a column suggesting that girls were mainly suited to keeping house and raising children. Elizabeth did not stay quiet. She wrote a spirited reply, unsigned, arguing that women, especially those supporting their families, deserved real opportunities to work.
The editor was so impressed that he printed a note asking the mystery writer to come forward. She did, and she was offered a job. She took the pen name “Nellie Bly” from a popular song of the day. Her early assignments were limited to so-called women’s topics, so she kept pushing for more serious work. Eventually she headed to New York City.
Speaking Up for Those Who Could Not
New York was not welcoming at first. Newspapers rarely hired women as reporters. But in 1887, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World gave her a daring assignment: find out how patients were really being treated at the women’s asylum on Blackwell’s Island (today’s Roosevelt Island).
Nellie pretended to be unwell so she could be admitted, and she spent about ten days inside. What she found was heartbreaking: women who were cold, poorly fed and treated harshly, in places that were far from clean. When she came out, she wrote about it plainly and honestly.
Her series, later published as the book Ten Days in a Mad-House, stirred the public. The National Women’s History Museum notes that it led to more funding to improve conditions there, and the National Park Service credits her work with helping spark wider reforms. A young woman who had once been overlooked used her voice for people the world was ignoring.
Seventy-Two Days Around the Globe
Two years later, Nellie proposed something even bolder: to beat the 80-day journey in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days. She left Hoboken aboard the Augusta Victoria on November 14, 1889, traveling by steamship, train and more, while readers followed her progress in the World.
On January 25, 1890, she stepped off a train in Jersey City. According to the Heinz History Center, the trip took 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes, a world record at the time. (Another traveler beat her time a few months later, but her journey had already captured the world’s imagination.)
“Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
— Joshua 1:9 (KJV)
A Life That Kept Going
Nellie later married businessman Robert Seaman and, after his death, ran his manufacturing company, earning patents and offering workers benefits that were uncommon in her day. She rode in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., and reported from Europe during World War I. She died on January 27, 1922, still working as a writer.
What Her Story Teaches Our Families
- Setbacks are not the end of the story. Losing her father and her home shaped Nellie, but it did not stop her.
- Speak up with kindness and truth. One honest letter opened a door that had been closed to her.
- Use your gifts for others. Her most important work gave a voice to people who had none.
- Be brave enough to start. Every long journey begins with one step onto the ship.
Through every storm, we rise together, and sometimes rising starts with one small, courageous choice.
Who in your family has turned a hard season into a new beginning, and what gave them the courage to keep going?
Sources: National Women’s History Museum, “Nellie Bly“; National Park Service, “Nellie Bly“; Heinz History Center, “Nellie Bly: Around the World“; KJV Joshua 1:9.
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