Mrs. Andrew (Joan) Cuneo

This image was made from a photo that was published in the Indianapolis Star on July 28, 1908. The woman pictured is Joan Cuneo, the top female race driver of the early 20th Century. Cuneo enjoyed reasonable success with the best example coming in 1909 on an oval dirt track in New Orleans (this link takes you to valuable information by her biographer, Elsa Nystrom). The New Orleans event triggered action by the American Automobile Association (AAA) to curtail the participation of women in auto racing. To be clear the reason I titled this image the way I did was to underscore how Joan was typically referred to in the press - as Andrew Cuneo's wife, not simply as Joan Cuneo.