Nellie Bly - Bronx, NY - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born during the Civil War near Pittsburgh, PA. She was one of fifteen children, thirteen of whom were girls. Though fairly well off initially, her father’s untimely death (when she was just six years old) and subsequent financial hardships prevented her from completing a higher education. Nevertheless, she was able to land a job with the Pittsburgh Gazette when the editor was impressed by her stinging response to one of their editorials. The editor gave her the pen name Nellie Bly (a misspelling of the Stephen Foster song Nelly Bly) which she would use for the rest of her career.

After a move to New York City, Bly was hired by Joseph Pulitzer and his New York World newspaper. Backed by Pulitzer, she rose to fame as an investigative journalist, exposing political corruption and poor conditions in the workplace and in state hospitals. The most famous of these episodes was when she posed as an insane woman in order to experience firsthand the deplorable conditions at the Mental Health Hospital on Blackwell's Island in New York. Her sensational reporting brought about significant reform in the city’s asylum system and elevated her to celebrity status.

Another of her journalistic exploits was to put Jules Verne’s ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ to the test. In just a little over 72 days after departing from Hoboken, NJ, she was back in New York having successfully circumnavigated the globe. This was a world record at the time, but it only stood for a couple of months. Interestingly, she actually met Jules Verne while traveling across France.

In 1895, Bly married wealthy industrialist Robert Seaman and gave up journalism to assist with her new husband’s business, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., which made, among other things, steel barrels and milk cans. Getting involved with all aspects of the business, Nellie Bly even obtained a patent for a novel milk can design.

Robert Seaman, who was forty years older than Bly, died in 1904 leaving her to run the business. Apparently, Bly didn’t have much of a head for the financial aspects of the business world and within a few years, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. went bankrupt. Nellie Bly returned to journalism for a while but eventually died penniless in 1922 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. In 1978, the New York Press Club raised the funds to provide a headstone for her grave.
(Source: wikipedia.org)

Description: See Long Description above. Date of birth: 05/05/1864 Date of death: 01/27/1922 Area of notoriety: Other Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 8:30 am to 4:30 pm Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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