Based on an examination of well-kept primary source material, this paper presents a personal and professional history of Mary Paxton Keeley, the first woman graduate of one of the first journalism schools in the United States, the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. Starting with her early years, the paper explains that Keeley was a native of Independence, Missouri, who received her bachelor's degree in 1910, two years after the founding of the school. It shows that by her own account, Keeley was the first woman reporter in Kansas City, Missouri, taking a job at the "Post" a week after graduation, and that nearly two decades and a master's degree later, she began the journalism department at Christian, now Columbia, College in Columbia, Missouri, and taught there for a quarter century, dying on December 6, 1986, at age 100. The paper, which examines her life in the context of the changing role of American women at the beginning of this century, with a particular look at women journalists and journalism educators, illustrates the education and career choices available to women at the time. Her pioneer spirit and her full, active life are also emphasized--it is noted that even after retirement she worked in journalism, as an editor, free lance writer, and book reviewer, and that in fact, she became a photojournalist in her seventies. (SKC)