WWI woman camoufleur Margaret Anthony Young

Until recently, I don’t think I had heard of an American industrial / interior designer named Margaret Anthony Young. Originally from Jacksonville FL, she studied Applied Design at Pratt Institute in New York (1913-15), and at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design (now affiliated with George Washington University) in Washington DC (1916-17). She also studied with the American Impressionist painter William von Schlegell, and worked as a designer for Herter Looms, a famous tapestry and textile design firm that was founded in 1909 by Albert Herter.

This is of particular interest here because Margaret Young is said to have served in the Camouflage Corps of the US Navy, in 1917-18 as a Yeoman First Class. That claim is surprising because we have often written about the limited participation of American women in WWI camouflage (including naval camouflage). We’ve also produced a video talk, and curated an exhibition (see view of entrance banner above) on the same subject. 

But we’ve never run across a navy camoufleur named Margaret Anthony Young. At the same time, we probably shouldn’t be surprised. Very few women were permitted to serve in other than civilian positions (women were still unable to vote), and we do have several photographs of unidentified women working in the Design Subsection at US Navy headquarters in Washington DC. Beginning in 1926, Young was the owner of The Little Gallery in Jacksonville, while also working as an interior designer. In the 1946 edition of Who’s Who in America, she is listed as the second wife of academic administrator Milton Haight Turk.