Passports
There are four of Frieda Gillette’s passports, spanning from her younger years to her last one, issued in April 1971. Her passports sported the same information; she was 5'5", with brown hair and brown eyes, until her final passport, in which her hair color was listed as grey. Though it’s a small difference, it’s a tangible sign that she continued to travel into her old(er) age. Something interesting is that one of her passports shows how she went to Germany only a few years before WWII. This places her travels at a very pivotal time and location in history. The passports also had stamps from all the countries she visited, which was really fun to see, especially since they show order of travels and track her global movement.
This type of travel was not especially common for women of the time, especially not the ones who were unmarried. To put some of this in context, the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote in the US passed in 1920, so when Frieda herself was only 21 years old. While opportunities for women were beginning to expand, the world was still relatively limited in what it expected from them, yet she traveled extensively. These passports reflect a level of independence that wasn’t always common for women in this period. The fact that she was consistently traveling suggests a sense of confidence and curiosity that clearly shaped both her life and her work.