Soroptimist International of Seattle Metropolitan photograph collection, approximately 1925-2000

SISM founders include many accomplished women, including Bertha Knight Landes and Ella E. Mc Bride. Landes, the second federation president, became one of Seattle’s first two councilwomen in 1922, served two terms and was inaugurated mayor of Seattle in 1926. In one of her moments in the spotlight as mayor, she welcomed Charles Lindbergh to Sand Point Air Field on September 14, 1927. Landes served as president of the Seattle Soroptimist Club from 1930-1934 and died shortly thereafter in 1944.

McBride was the President of the Seattle Soroptimist Club in 1938. An avid mountain climber, she visited Mount Rainier with a group of climbers including the photographers, Asahel and Edward Curtis. During this trip, Edward encouraged her to move to Seattle to run his photography studio. She left her first successful career as principal of Ainsworth School in Portland, Oregon in 1907 and came to Seattle to be Edward Curtis’s business manager. After several years working for Curtis’s Studio, she started her own portrait studio in downtown Seattle which she ran for more than 30 years. Her work has been exhibited around the world and her portrait subjects included famous and not so famous. In the 1950s, she photographed many members of the Soroptimist Seattle Club. Ella McBride died in 1965 at the astonishing age of 103.