Elizabeth Williams Berry

Berry's family were Welsh and had settled in Australia.[1] She was born in Melbourne on 21 June 1854.[1] Berry started racing horses at age six.[2] Her father provided tutors to come to her home twice a week to provide for Berry's education.[2] Her first racing win was at age 10, when she placed first on the Moonee Valley Racecourse.[1] She started racing professionally under the name of Jack Williams when she was 13 years old.[3] In order to look the part of a boy, she wore traditional racing silks on the track, and off the track donned a Bowler derby and smoked cigars.[4] She went on to race, disguised as a man, for more than 24 years as a jockey in Australia, England, France, Italy, New Zealand and South Africa.[1][5][6] During her jockeying career, she was 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weighed 96 pounds (44 kg).[5] She told the Independent-Record that she won around 4,200 races during her career.[4]

Berry arrived in the United States about 1900, and initially rode races in Northern California.[1] She met her future husband, veterinarian J.B. "Doc" Berry, in Seattle, and they married six weeks later on 21 June 1903.[1][7] A judge in Colorado gave her the nickname "Mother" when awarding her legal custody of a runaway boy she had taken in and taught horse racing skills.[3] Berry retired from riding horses in 1911.[1] After her jockeying career was over, she continued to work with racehorses as a trainer.[6]

The Berrys moved to Helena, Montana, in 1913 and made the town their permanent residence.[1] Berry raced horses on the Montana racing circuit and named several of them after her husband.[8] Doc Berry died in 1927.[1] In Helena, Mother Berry lived in a house at the Montana State Fairgrounds until 27 April 1937, when her home was destroyed by a fire.[2] After the fire, she lived in a house on the local cemetery grounds for a few years.[2] In 1956, she moved into the Stewart Homes project in Helena, where she lived for the remainder of her life, remaining independent well after her 100th birthday.[8] In 1965, at age 111, she was declared the oldest person in Montana.[6] In 1966, she was made an honorary member of the Capital City Horse Racing Association.[9]

In February 1969, a few days before the groundbreaking ride of Diane Crump as the first woman in America to ride openly as a licensed female jockey in a parimutuel race, the Lexington Herald-Leader reviewed the history of women riding as jockeys, describing Berry as "probably the only lady jockey to compete successfully against men for any length of time."[10] Berry died in her home in Helena on 26 March 1969.[11] She was buried in Resurrection Cemetery.[12] In Helena, a horse race named in her honor, The Mother Berry Memorial, ran during the 1970s.[13]