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Carlia S. Westcott

First American licensed woman marine engineer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ108876777 ↗
Source-derived summary

Carlia S. Westcott was an American engineer. She was the first woman to receive a first-of-a-kind license in Marine Engineering in the United States, in December 1921. She was highlighted on the cover of The Woman Engineer after the New York Times covered her. She was from Seattle, Washington. She was married to the chief engineer of the Cary-Dan's Towing Company who worked on one of the tugboats in the Seattle region. Carlia assisted her husband on one of the vessels. There she carried out the tasks of a fireman.

Carlia Westcott took and passed the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, No. 38 test in Seattle, Washington. She went on to complete the U.S. Steamboat Service examination, in which she passed.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Carlia S. Westcott” as first American licensed woman marine engineer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carlia, Westcott and First.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1921—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Carlia, Westcott and First providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Carlia S. Westcott”, the useful work is to connect “first American licensed woman marine engineer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108876777. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1921.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Carlia S. Westcott”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Carlia S. Westcott primary sources, Carlia S. Westcott archive and Carlia research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Carlia S. Westcott” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.