Background
He was born on July 15, 1875 in Lancaster, Ohio, the son of Salome Matlack and Samuel S. Knabenshue.
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Roy Knabenshue
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Career
Samuel Knabenshue, an educator and political writer for the Toledo Blade for many years, served as United States. consul in Belfast, Ireland, from 1905 to 1909 and as consul general in Tianjin, China, from 1909 to 1914. In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Roy Knabenshue piloted Thomas Scott Baldwin"s California Arrow dirigible to a height of 2,000 feet (610 m) and was able to return to the takeoff point. He was the first to make a dirigible flight over New York City in 1905.
He performed barnstorming and worked as the general manager of the Wright Exhibition Team.
From 1933 to 1944 he worked for the National Park Service and then worked for a Los Angeles, California firm reconditioning used aircraft. In 1958 he had a stroke.
He had a second stroke at his home at a trailer park in Arcadia, California on February 21, 1960. He died on March 6, 1960 at the Evergreen Sanitarium in Temple City, California.
One of the first in America to pilot a steerable balloon
In 1904 he piloted the first successful dirigible in America at the Saint Louis World’s Fair
The Wright Company hired him in 1910 to manage the 1910-1911 Wright Exhibition Team
In 1913 he built the first passenger dirigible in America: White City.
