The Allen Family of Aeronauts: according to New York-based aeronautical researcher Chris Lynch, “If there was a founding family of RI aviation, they are it.”
The Allen Family of Aeronauts
James & Ezra Allen
Barrington natives James Allen (1824-1897) and his younger brother Ezra Allen (1840 – 1902) distinguished themselves through a lifelong commitment to aeronautics in the 19th century.
George Armitage
George Armitage (1887-1948) Born in England, he came to Rhode Island as a youngster and attended Providence public schools. He may have been the first person to fly in Rhode Island; it is known that he began experimenting with “power driven gliders” as early as 1905. A 1934 article in Rhode Island Review stated: “To […]
Allen P. Bourdon
Allen P Bourdon (1888-1972) was an aviation pioneer and WWI instructor pilot; he also flew with Amelia Earhart. He moved to RI in 1917 to learn to fly at Gallaudet Aviation in East Greenwich. He became a designer and test pilot for Gallaudet and later set up his own manufacturing plant at Hillsgrove. Bourdon Aircraft […]
Raymond Noble Estey
Raymond Noble Estey (1886-1980), a native of Waterbury, CT, moved to Rhode Island in 1909 and became an early photographer for the Providence Tribune. He assisted 2006 inductee Gerald Hanley with his first airplane in 1913, and produced some of the very first aerial photos of Rhode Island that year. While retaining his job as […]
Edson Fessenden Gallaudet
Edson Fessenden Gallaudet (1871-1945), Aviation Pioneer/Aircraft Manufacturer In 1898, four years before the Wright Brothers, he constructed and flew a glider, now in the Smithsonian, which embodied the principle of the warping wing. In 1911 he learned to fly at the Wright school, earning US pilot’s license #32 and a similarly low number in France. […]
Antoine Gazda
Antoine Gazda was an Austrian count, a race car driver, and a World War I fighter ace (on the losing side), but he spent World War II in Providence, living in suite 1009 of the Biltmore Hotel. The work he performed here in Rhode Island was considered so crucial to the Allied war effort that […]
CAPT Adolphus W. Gorton, USN (Ret.)
Captain Adolphus W. Gorton, US Navy (Ret), (1897-1989), was born January 29, 1897 in Pawtuxet, a direct descendant of the Gortons who founded the City of Warwick. He graduated from Moses Brown and entered Dartmouth in 1916, but left to join the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in France. He sailed abroad on May 5, […]
Otto Hermann
Otto Hermann (c. 1870-1930): Otto Hermann was an auto stuntman who held a 1907 patent for a double loop-the-loop automobile-stunt ramp. He moved to Providence from Atlantic City, and started building his own biplane in the summer of 1909, described in a Journal article as “the first one to be tried out on testing grounds […]
Edward Albert Johnson
Edward Albert Johnson (1885-1949) was born in Newport, RI in January of 1885. He developed an interest in aeronautics and spent May-October, 1915, at the Curtiss school in Buffalo. He first soloed in 1915 and received Pilot License No. 32. He joined the Curtiss Aeroplane Company and became its representative in England. After the US […]
Harry M. Jones
Harry M. Jones (1890-1973) Described in a 1912 Providence Journal article as Rhode Island’s “1st home grown aviator”, Jones managed the very first air show ever held in Rhode Island that same year. He was also the first (and last) person ever to land a plane on the Boston Common. Jones was best known, however, […]
Sabatino ‘‘Sabbie’’ Ludovici
Sabatino ‘‘Sabbie’’ Ludovici (1910-2001) Born in Oguila, Italy, this pioneer aviator was also founder and chief flight instructor of Skylanes at North Central Airport. He started flying in 1927, and launched his first flight school at the What Cheer Airport in Pawtucket (later the site of Narragansett Race Track). In 1932 he moved to Smithfield […]
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