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WARREN -- The first black woman to own property in Warren also is responsible for bequeathing the funds to build the Salvation Army building on Franklin Street SE, but the freed slave had to stash her life savings in her home because banks did not accept a black woman as a client, said Meghan Reed, executive director of the Trumbull County Historical Society.
Reed gave a presentation Wednesday about the accomplishments of Warren women at a Trumbull County commissioners meeting.
Carrie Mountain Green was born into slavery in Maryland around 1857 and came to Warren following the Civil War, where she worked as a wet nurse and later as a domestic worker for wealthy families, including the Hughes family, who owned the Hughes Mansion on North Park Avenue, and the Packard family, Reed said.
"But what's most significant about her," Reed said, "is that when she passed away in 1948, they found $30,000 in cash. Her house was right on Pine Street, behind the Horseshoe Bar, and I think a part of the story that's really missing from most narratives of her is that at that time through the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, as a black woman, no bank in town would have had her as a client. She had no option but to secure her money where she could in her home."
She was known to sleep on the first floor of her home, guarding it with a pistol, Reed said.
Green donated the money, which equates to $325,000 today, to the Salvation Army to construct the building, Reed said.
Few have heard of Zella McBerty, but she likely was the first woman electrical engineer in the country, Reed said. She and her husband Fred McBerty lived in a house on Washington Street in Warren and was born in Mineral Ridge. A newspaper article claimed Zella was a "better mechanic than any of the other men that she worked with," at Packard Electric, Reed said.
Zella and Fred purchased and operated Federal Machine and Welding Company, which became the largest electric welding manufacturing company, Reed said.
She also was active with local professional and business associations, and supported efforts to increase the involvement of women in the professional sphere.
In 1924, Zella was the only woman to attend a conference of the International Association of Electric Welders in London, Reed said.
Alaska Packard became the first woman special agent in the FBI in 1922, but it was short lived because J. Edgar Hoover didn't allow women to serve when he took over in 1924, Reed said.
Women didn't come to the bureau again until the 1970s.
Zell Hart Deming started working at the Warren Tribune in 1907 as a society editor, but rose up the ranks until she had a controlling interest of the paper and under her leadership grew the paper. She, her daughter and granddaughter owned and led the paper into the 1980s, Reed said.
She was the first woman inducted into the Associated Press.