Sadie Kneller Miller (October 7, 1867 – November 21, 1920) was a

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

journalist, known for being one of the earliest female baseball reporters, as well as the only female correspondent covering some international events. Miller was born in Westminster, Maryland. She graduated from Western Maryland College in 1885 and worked as a journalist for the '' Westminster Democratic Advocate''. She then moved to Baltimore with her parents and started working for the '' Baltimore Telegram''. At the ''Telegram'' she began covering the

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League East, East division. As one of the American L ...

in 1894 by disguising herself as a man; only after her female identity was found out was she known as the “only woman baseball reporter in the country”. She moved on to photography, submitting photos of

Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clock ...

activities from the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...

in Annapolis to '' Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly'', securing her a position there. At Leslie’s, Miller covered stories such as the

Baltimore Fire of 1904 The Great Baltimore Fire raged in Baltimore, Maryland from Sunday, February 7, to Monday, February 8, 1904. More than 1,500 buildings were completely leveled, and some 1,000 severely damaged, bringing property loss from the disaster to an estimate ...

, the presidential inauguration of

Howard Taft William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pre ...

, and Democratic party conventions. She also photographed portraits of Susan B. Anthony and

Teddy Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...

. Miller was a professional journalist, but most people did not know she was a woman. She wrote with the byline "SKM", which hid her female identity. She may have been the first woman to cover major league baseball and is one of the few to combine photography with journalism. While on national tour with the Orioles in 1897, her gender was "discovered". She became the world's first female war correspondent while covering the fighting in Morocco between Spanish forces and the Moors in 1909. While working on an assignment in Germany, she was arrested as a spy. She also wrote on the Yukon Gold Rush and did interviews from several countries including Cuba,

Czarist Russia The Tsardom of Russia or Tsardom of Rus' also externally referenced as the Tsardom of Muscovy, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of Tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter I in ...

, and Turkey. Her most reprinted interview was with Pancho Villa, a Mexican Revolutionary general in 1916 at his guerrilla base. A stroke in 1918 forced Miller to retire from ''Leslie's Illustrated Weekly'', ending her career as a journalist. She died two years later. Her name was added to the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 1988.

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Sadie Kneller Miller
MSA SC 3520-13571. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Aug. 2013.

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