Briggs, Emily Edson (1830–1910)

American journalist . Name variations: (pseudonym) Olivia. Born Emily Pamona Briggs on September 14, 1830, in Burton, Ohio; died in Washington, D.C., on July 3, 1910; married John R. Briggs, in 1854.

Emily Edson Briggs, who distinguished herself as the first woman journalist to cover the White House (1861), was born in Burton, Ohio, and spent her first ten years there until her family moved to the Chicago area in 1840. She taught school briefly before marrying John R. Briggs and settling in Keokuk, Iowa, where John was part owner of the newspaper the Daily Whig. In 1861, he was appointed assistant clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the couple took up residence in Washington, D.C.

Briggs soon developed a knack for observing and commenting on the political scene. A letter she sent to the Washington Chronicle, defending the efficiency of women in government employment, caught the eye of the paper's owner, John W. Forney, who hired her to write a daily column for the Chronicle and its sister paper the Philadelphia Press. Using the pseudonym Olivia, Briggs wrote columns that were fashioned as letters to the paper. While her pieces touched upon society and fashion, they also contained political and social insights that set her apart from other women journalists of the day. Under the Lincoln administration, she became the first woman to report from the White House, and later was the first woman admitted to the congressional press gallery. Acquiring a national reputation, Briggs became the first president of the newly formed Women's National Press Association in 1882. In later years, she was a celebrated Washington hostess. Her columns, The Olivia Letters, appeared for two decades and were published in book form in 1906 four years before her death on July 3, 1910.