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By Kate E. Stephenson

I was tempted to title this Trivia installment “Kate Warne, First Female Private Eye” but it just couldn’t express the extraordinary life of this Kate, the early feminist power that Ms. Warne exhibited during her life and the portion of the glass ceiling she broke through. So I avoided the conservative temptation because Kate Warne’s life was so the opposite of conservative, she was a powerhouse.

Before women gained the right to vote; before “respectable” women worked outside of the household; before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation that finally provided legislative guarantee that all people of the United States are free; before it was conceivable that women had the ability, much less the agency to think for themselves—On the morning of August 23, 1856, Kate Warne became the first known female detective in the United States at the famed and enduring Pinkerton Detective Agency (now Pinkerton Government Services, Inc.).

Warne was born in New York around 1830 in the tiny town of Erin in Chemung County, New York. While it is not exactly known who her family was, notably there was a single Warn[e] family living in Erin in the 1830 census—Israel and Elizabeth (nee Hurlbut). They had a little girl by 1830, but her name is unknown. The family had moved to Illinois by 1856, when the couple’s oldest son, Allan, married a woman there. Whether this was Kate’s biological family or not is uncertain.

What is fairly certain is that Warne was married and widowed early in life. When Kate Warne first entered his office, she undoubtedly didn’t stir much of a response. But that would quickly change. Allan Pinkerton describes Kate in his Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches, as Continue reading →