A Curtiss JN-4 Jenny

My great-granduncle John Yuncker was a piano sales manager in Los Angeles during the early 20th century. Here he participated in aviation history by taking one of the first-ever commercial passenger trips on August 30, 1919.  As I describe in a previous post, he flew from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara to close on the sale of a very expensive piano.

The airplane appears to be a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny.”  It was owned by Syd Chaplin, half-brother of Charlie Chaplin. Here John Yuncker is pictured taking off on his flight, and later being greeted by his colleague Harry Braden upon his return. ¹  A montage of an unrelated, restored Jenny is shown for comparison. ²

The “Jenny” was also the airplane pictured on the famous postage stamp known as the Inverted Jenny. ³

1. “Travels 200 Miles in Air to Close Ampico Sale,” The Music Trade Review, Sep 20, 1919; online archives, The International Arcade Museum (http://mtr.arcade-museum.com/MTR-1919-69-12/ : downloaded 11 March 2015), page 5.
2. Daniel Berek, Flickr, (https://www.flickr.com/photos/23269353@N00/with/23279510791/ : downloaded 6 August 2016).
3. New York Daily News, Edgar Sandoval, (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/inverted-jenny-stamp-upside-plane-sells-1m-article-1.2656004 : downloaded 6 August 2016) citing Siegel Auction Galleries, Inc.

Author: Mike

By way of background, I have over forty years experience as a software engineer. I enjoy genealogy as a hobby, which I started in earnest in 1994. I've always liked family history. Now whenever I uncover some fascinating fact about an ancestor, I also take time to read about that era in history. Whether it be the Napoleonic Wars, the Erie Canal, Steamships, the Port of Hamburg, or hurricane tracks, there's always something new to learn. By 2000 I published my family tree on the Internet. Unfortunately there were no software tools then that did precisely what I wanted. So I created GED-GEN, a Windows program to automatically generate a genealogy website. It converts a GEDCOM data file to a series of web pages in family group sheet format. Since 2002, people from all over the world have used GED-GEN for their websites. Today I continue to research my family history, with the help of distant cousins. I am also actively creating digital images of my collection of genealogical evidence. View all posts by Mike