The first American woman to take place in an Olympic event didn’t know she was competing and died never finding out!

Margaret Ives Abbott was born in Calcutta, India in 1876. She married writer Finley Peter Dunne in 1902, but it was in 1900 that she made history without ever knowing it. Abbott had traveled to Paris to study art under Edgar Degasand Auguste Rodin. She entered into a women’s golf tournament along with her mother, Mary Perkins Ives Abbot, a novelist and Chicago Tribune book reviewer. Margaret was the first American woman to take first place in an Olympic event by winning the women's golf tournament, consisting of nine holes, with a score of 47 at the 1900 Paris games.
These games were apparently so poorly organized that many competitors, including Abbott, did not realize that the events they entered were part of the Olympics. Historical research did not establish that the game was on the Olympic program until after her death, so she herself never knew it. Her mother finishing tied for seventh, making it the first and still only Olympic event in which a mother and daughter competed at the same time. Margaret died in 1955.

Read more at http://www.omg-facts.com/Sports/The-First-American-Woman-To-Take-Place-I/55164#qzTUIix2gbgCDGJJ.99