Amy and Edwin Earhart's first daughter was born on July 24, 1897, in Amy's parents' house. She was named Amelia Mary after her two grandmothers. Her nickname in the family was Meely. Three years later her sister, Muriel, was born and nicknamed Pidge after a blue pigeon in her favorite song.
Edwin got a job as a claims agent for railroads and was away from home very often. Amy went with him on some of the longer trips, so Amelia and Muriel stayed with the Otis grandparents during the school year.
Amelia and Muriel were thought to be wealthy and attended private schools. As a young child Amelia was slim, active, athletic, and a tomboy.
Instead of playing with dolls she enjoyed sports, games, and books meant for boys. Her parents often took her out of school to go on business trips because they thought anything unusual was educational.
Amelia had a great imagination and was always inventing things. When she was six, her family had neighbors who had chickens that got away, and she made a chicken trap to catch them. She got an orange crate with a hinged lid and the lid was propped up by a stick. She tied a piece of string to the stick and held the other end. When a chicken walked into the crate, she pulled the string and the lid dropped, trapping the chicken inside. Her mother made her give the chicken back, and she later wrote, "What a blow".
Another invention she made was a roller coaster. Amelia's father took the family to a fair in St. Louis, and she was greatly impressed by the roller coaster there. Back in Atchison, she and her cousin built one from the roof of their shed to the ground. The car was made out of boards with roller skates attached to them. Amelia was the first one to go down it, and when she did, the car swooped down the track, hit the ground and flipped over. She got up looked at the problem, and decided that the track needed to be longer. They made it longer and this time she made it down safely. When Ameilia and her cousin's grandparents saw the rolercoaster, they made them take it down right away.
One Christmas Amelia's father bought sleds for his daughters with steel flat runners. They were very eager to try them out and went sledding right away. When Amelia went down the hill, a junk man's cart pulled out into the street in front of her. She couldn't stop, and the man driving the cart didn't see her. She quickly steered and went under the horse's front and back legs; she was almost killed!
On warm Sundays, the family would cook lunch outside on a brick fireplace. Amelia had no desire for cooking, but instead she loved to read; she especially liked books written by Scott and Dickens. She often wondered as an adult and as a child why boys got to have all the fun and adventure.
As a girl she loved horses and took every chance she got to ride them. Two of her friend's fathers owned butcher shops and let Amelia ride the horses that drew the cart. She loved the book Black Beauty and was filled with anger against the cruel adults that made the horses Beauty and Ginger suffer.
In 1907, her parents moved to Des Moines and the girls stayed with their grandparents until her parents found a suitable house to live in. This happened in 1908.
In the summer of 1908, Edwin took his family to the Iowa state fair for Amelia's eleventh birthday. There were pony rides, merry-go-rounds, and an airplane on display that was going to fly. It was the first plane Amelia had ever seen, and Edwin was immediately captivated by it, but Amelia was not impressed. She wrote "It was a thing of rust and wood and not at all interesting..."
Amelia's father played a big part in her life. He often played cowboys and pioneers with the girls and their friends. He also told thrilling western stories with him as the hero. Then he started to drink too much, and when he came home at night the girls would listen for his foot steps. Brisk steps meant that their father was coming home; shuffling steps meant that an angry thick-tongued stranger was coming home. The girls were unhappy and felt deserted and unloved when their dad started drinking too much. Edwin went to the hospital to get help and was cured of his drinking problem. As a result of his drinking, Edwin lost his job and the family moved again, and this time to St. Paul, Minnesota.
The family was very eager to start a new life in Minnesota and rejoiced when Edwin got a job as a clerk in a freight office.
Edwin began to drink again and this time it almost cost him his life. One night when he was coming home, he was drunk and stepped out into the path of a moving car. The driver did not see him, and because Edwin was drunk, he did not see the car. He got hit, but not killed.
After he recovered from the accident he got a job in a claims office in Springfield, Missouri. When they got there they discovered that the employee that Edwin was going to replace didn't have to leave after all. Amy had become fed up with Edwin by then, and she and the girls went to live with friends in Chicago. Edwin returned to Kansas City and lived with his sister and her family.