Historedia
Episode 1 of 1

Patent Award

When
5 May 1809
Where
United States
Part of
Mary Kies receives the first US patent granted to a woman

Mary Kies received a patent for weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats, signed by President James Madison.

On May 5, 1809, her patent for a new technique of weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats was signed by President James Madison. The invention was especially timely because the United States was attempting to maintain neutrality and had stopped importing European goods, a context in which the Patent Office's establishment made domestic techniques valuable. The passages do not specify where the signing took place.

Sources

  1. Mary Dixon Kies Wikipedia, revision of 2026-04-01

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.