When tattoos began popping up everywhere in our research this week, we took it as a sign and discovered Maud Stevens Wagner, credited as the first female tattooist in the United States.
Born in Kansas in 1877, little is known of her early life. By adulthood, Maud was performing as an acrobat, aerialist and contortionist (think Victorian age Cirque du Soleil) in traveling circuses throughout the Midwest. At the time, circuses were one of the nation’s most popular forms of entertainment and sideshow performers were often what brought the crowds — eager to view exotic oddities like bearded ladies and tattooed men.
Graduating to the big time, Maud began performing her act at the Louisiana Purchase Expo in 1904. Informally called the St. Louis World’s Fair, the expo featured popular culture and entertainment for its almost 20 million visitors. It was here that Maud met Gus Wagner, known as the Tattooed Globetrotter and billed as “the most artistically marked up man in America.”
Maud was fascinated with his tattoos and Gus was fascinated with Maud, so she agreed to a date on the condition that he gave her a lesson in tattooing. Gus was a merchant seaman who had travelled the world collecting a reported 264 tattoos while learning the artform from tribesmen in places like Java and Borneo.
Using his homemade tools, he taught Maud the “hand-poked” technique. It is exactly like it sounds: the ink is poked into the skin with a needle. She would use this technique for her entire career, even though an electric machine had been invented in 1891 based on Thomas Edison’s patent for an electric pen.
Maud began practicing on other circus performers while Gus began decorating Maud with his art. She eventually became covered to her neck with his designs, including American flags, monkeys, butterflies, lions, horses, snakes and flowers. Tattoos were uncommon and a tattooed woman was extremely rare, so the now married pair gained national attention for their uniqueness. They traveled the country performing in sideshows and vaudeville theatres while setting up shop in the cities and towns they visited. The locals clamored for tattoos from the first female tattoo artist and the pair are credited for spreading the popularity of the artform throughout the middle of the country.
Their daughter Lovetta was born in 1910 and though she was taught the family trade as a child, inking her first customer at the tender age of nine, her parents forbade Lovetta from tattooing her own body. Maud relented when in 1941, Gus died after being struck by lightning. Still, Lovetta refused to get a tattoo telling her mother that if “Papa couldn’t do them like he had done hers” then she didn’t want one.
Maud died in 1961 and Lovetta carried on the family trade. She gave her last tattoo to the legendary tattoo artist and entrepreneur Don Ed Hardy shortly before her death in 1981.
There were two reasons tattooing crossed our radar this week. First was the surprising news that even icon Dolly Parton had them, though she won’t say where. The second was a story about Texan MJ Hegar, a US Air Force veteran and a candidate for the US Senate. When her opposition tried to disparage her for her sleeve of tattoos, she responded “You think I’m ashamed of them? The cover my shrapnel wounds from when my helicopter was shot down. They’re a mark of service to my country and I’m proud of them.”
We think Maud would be proud of them too.