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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

America's First Woman Governor!


by Tanya Hanson

I've always been intrigued that Wyoming allowed women to vote far sooner than anyplace else--1869. So maybe it’s not a surprise that Wyoming elected the nation’s first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977). However, she never set out to be a politician. She truly believed a woman’s calling was home and family. Then her husband’s unexpected death thrust her into the political arena.

Her husband William Bradford Ross, a Democratic governor in a Republican state, died from complications of an appendectomy in October 1924. (Ouch!)

Wyoming law required that his successor be chosen in the general election scheduled a month later. When Dem party leaders offered Nellie the nomination to fill the remainder of her husband’s term, she did not reply. Her silence was taken as agreement. She was nominated on October 14 despite having no political experience and having played no real support for women’s suffrage. Later, she claimed she accepted the nomination because she believed she understood her husband’s goals and aspirations better than anybody else.


Missouri-born Nellie Davis Tayloe had prominent Southern connections, and her mother claimed distant kinship with George Washington. After the family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, she obtained a teaching certificate and taught kindergarten before her marriage. On a visit to Tennessee relatives, she met and fell in love with William.

The young lawyer moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming before marrying Nellie in 1902. While devoted to her husband and three sons (one died at ten months of age), Nellie was active in intellectual self-enrichment programs for the Cheyenne’s Women’s Club.

Upon her nomination, Nellie did not campaign for office, other than two open letters. Many voted for her as a tribute to her late husband. However, other citizens wanted Wyoming to have the first woman governor, not only as respect for its longstanding voting rights for women, but as a last chance to have the distinction:  Miriam Ferguson, the wife of Texas’s impeached governor, was running in his stead in the 1924 election.

Although Nellie handily won as Wyoming’s 14th governor, 1924 was a catastrophic election year for Democrats. She graciously accepted that the Republican-controlled legislature was unlikely to work with her. Still wearing her mourning garb, Nellie Tayloe Ross was inaugurated on January 5, 1925. (Miriam Ferguson was not inaugurated until January 25.) Ross’s brief speech promised a continuation of her husband’s role, rather than a new start.

Among her heartfelt causes, Nellie fought unsuccessfully for Wyoming to ratify the federal amendment prohibiting child labor, and sought state assistance for the faltering agricultural industry. She urged banking reform and bemoaned the difficulties of enforcing Prohibition. She stood her ground to the federal government on water rights. As an administrator, she received mixed reviews and did not win re-election in 1926.


Although she did not seek public office again, Nellie was not done. A prominent and popular lecturer, she forayed onto the national stage as a Wyoming committeewoman to the Democratic National Convention. In 1929, she seconded the presidential nomination for the governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith and traveled the country speaking on his behalf.

In 1933, Franklin D Roosevelt wanted to be the first president to appoint women to his cabinet, and considered Nellie Tayloe Ross for either Secretary of the Interior of Secretary of Labor. However, she was chosen Director of the Mint, the first woman so appointed. Upon discovering that gold and silver coins were still being struck by hand, she established automation. Her efficiency pared 3,000 employees from the roster of 4,000.

Until Dwight Eisenhower became president in 1952, Ross remained Director of the Mint. She lived in Washington D.C. when she died December 19, 1977. Another strong woman of the West!

I hope you enjoyed meeting her as much as I did!


Caught between a noose and a cave-in, Tulsa Sanderson must do anything possible to prove his brother’s innocence...even if it means marrying a gold miner’s daughter he just met. He needs every nugget and flake he can pull from her worn-out claim, but he sure doesn’t need a wife. Save his brother and he’ll be back on the Texas cattle trails. God, and trusting Him, are things of the past.
  
Charlotte Amalie lost her heart, her virtue, and her money to the last mysterious outsider in the valley. Faith? That’s wavered, too, after too many family tragedies. But she has no choice but to wed the handsome Tull. He bears terrible family secrets that need to be kept behind closed doors. Although she’s eager to leave the valley to find a new life for herself and medical treatments for her wounded brother, her unwanted marriage douses her plans, yet stirs up hope and love for Tull...and begins to fortify her weakened faith.

Can the two of them find a future--and faith--together even with their haunted pasts? 

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13 comments:

  1. I had read some on Nellie Ross, but was unaware of her activities after the govenorship. I admire the early women, who either chose or were placed in positions uncommon to other women. Thank you for highlighting another women worth knowing about. Doris

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    1. Hi Doris, I came across Nellie in our local paper that runs a "This Day In History" factoid each day. I hate it that we didn't learn about her in any history class I ever took! Grrrrrr. Thanks for the post today.

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  2. Tanya,
    She sounds like a woman worth knowing. It's those quiet ground-breakers that are often the most intriguing, because they obviously are guided by an inner strength and not ambitions of power. Wonderful post!

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    1. Hi Kristy, I can't even imagine how much courage this took, in the time period she was elected. And I love the fact that she figured out the automation of coinmaking. Wow.

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    2. Forgot to tell you thanks for the comment, Kristy. xo

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  3. One of the reasons my western stories are based in Wyoming is because of the real equality of women there. I knew about Nellie as far as being the first woman governor in the United States, but I didn't know all the wonderful information you gave us in this blog. A most informative and interesting post, Tanya.

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  4. Thanks, Sarah. In my very first book, the fact of voting rights was important because the heroine and hero were going to leave Nebraska for there. How wonderful that you hose Wyoming as your setting for just that reason! Way to go. xo Thanks for the post..

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  5. Nellie was a remarkable woman, wasn't she? What a full life she must have led. God bless the soft-tough women who blazed the trails the rest of us have had the privilege of following.

    Great post, Tanya! Thanks for sharing it with us. :-)

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  6. Great post, Tanya! Growing up in Wyoming, Nellie is about the first person we're introduced to in 4th Grade Wyoming history class. :) I think many believe her election and term was easy sailing because hey she's a woman in the "Equality State" but thank you for bringing in the cold facts that, that wasn't the case. I don't think many realize the only reason women were given the vote in Wyoming is because they didn't have enough men in the territory to form a state, so it women were equal, but not really. Although, I think women in all the Western states enjoyed greater equality for the very reason stated above, they were needed more.

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    1. Hey, Rustler? That would be a great topic for you to explore in a post at some point, wouldn't it? You being a Wyomingite and documented historian and all, you seem uniquely qualified to give everyone a glimpse of how un-equal even the most liberated (for the day) women were. Just a thought. :-)

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    2. Great minds, Tex! I'm on the case! Not that I'm out to kill anyone's dream, but I think it's an interesting look at misunderstood intentions and history.

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  7. Tanya, I heartily agree with you about the travesty of not learning about these sorts of historical tidbits in school. I taught history for many years, and it always irritated me that in the American history books my school adopted, so much of the Old West history was either left out completely or barely given a passing nod. I supplemented with information just like your information about Nellie.

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  8. Interesting! Amazing how sometimes we're thrust into positions just by our silence, isn't it? Great post, Tanya!

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