Agnes Leonard – Miss Coney Island 1924
Love those 1920s bathing suits.
Though undated, our photograph is from July 29, 1924, at Steeplechase Park. Miss Coney Island would go on to represent the neighborhood in the Miss America Pageant. This was before each state had just one representative. New York sent 13 local winners to Atlantic City. They came from Greater New York, Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, Yonkers, Newburgh, Rochester, Syracuse, Watertown and Bay Ridge!
Many states had no representation.
The news slug reads
Two Of A Kind – Meet the “Misses Coney Island” – two real beauties who captured the decision of the judges and the crowds at the New York amusement beach in the selection of representatives in the Atlantic City September pageant. Armand T Nichols, Director General of the Atlantic City frolic is shown congratulating Miss Agnes Leonard, school teacher entry of this year’s festival. Miss Walker, who was a runner for the top honors in the Pageant Beauty Tourney of 1923 was also on hand to extend her felicitations. photo – Publicity Department of the Atlantic City Pageant.
Miss Walker is Heather Eulalie Walker and was the second runner up to Mary Katherine Campbell. Campbell won the Miss America title two years in a row 1922 and 1923. Amazingly Campbell was also the first runner up in the 1924 contest! The rules were later changed in 1925 so that you could only enter the contest one time.
Miss America 1924 was Miss Philadelphia, Ruth Malcolmson. Unfortunately for Agnes Leonard she was not one of the 15 finalists. What became of Miss Leonard after the contest is unknown.
I am searching for a photo or any information regarding a Miss Coney Island named Hilda Sternbach (married name Fleischer). I assume that the contest included unmarried contestants, but I don’t know for sure. She would have been crowned sometime in the late 1920’s or during the 1930’s. The family recalls seeing a newspaper clipping, however it is now lost. Is there any way of finding this information. I have researched Newspapers.com. without success. Any advice would be appreciated.
B.Furman
Beverly-
I checked many online news databases and came up with some information about her but nothing related to Hilda being in a Miss Coney Island contest. The newspaper online databases that might be helpful (though is somewhat clunky) https://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html and the Library of Congress link to online newspapers https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/ There is also Proquest Historical Newspapers through your local library.
Barring those search methods, it becomes somewhat impractical to find this clipping.
These two solutions are only if you are absolutely determined to track it down and spend a n enormous amount of time to do so.
Through the Daily News (available on proquest historical newspapers) which covered the Miss Coney Island contest you would search for dates each year the contest was held from about 1928 -1935 when Hilda would have been of age to participate and most likely to have entered a contest like that.
Then armed with the dates go to the NYPL main branch on 42nd Street and visit the newspaper division of the library. There they have the microfilmed newspaper records of all the NYC daily papers. You would request microfilm and manually scan through hundreds of pages to find what you are searching for.
The NY Times, Daily News and Herald Tribune all searchable online through proquest so no need to search those in person. But there are at least 10 other NYC daily English language papers that could have covered the contest including The Daily Mirror, The Telegraph, Journal American, The Graphic, The Post etc. which have never been digitized.
The only other thing you might do is you could also hire a professional genealogist to track down the clipping. Obviously that would be cost prohibitive just to find a clipping, unless money is no object.
Good luck and write back if you have any questions or find something.
Agnes Leonard was born in 1891 and was still a teacher as of the 1940 census. She died in 1967.