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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New Release Thursday: THE CALLING by Sara Barnard

Esau Fitzpatrick is bad at being good—and even worse at being bad. As he waits for his sweetheart, Ella Allen, inside the Paisley Settlement church, a brewing storm erupts and lightning strikes, setting the church aflame. Ella and her parents pull Esau from the fire, but his parents are lost in the blazing inferno.

Angry at God, Esau flees his home and all he holds dear, only to fall in with the notorious Covington-Jones gang.  He journeys down the path to destruction and darkness, reliving the hellish fire in his nightmares.

Ella clings to the prayer that Esau will find his way back to a godly path – and to her. But Esau is gone, and her world is falling to pieces. Ella must lean on God in a way she’s never had to before as she follows her heart against everyone’s wishes. Can she dare to believe that Esau will ever change?

Esau’s life as an outlaw comes to a head during an epic cattle rustle. He is forced to choose between eternal hellfire and the rocky path of the Lord. Will Ella still be waiting for him? Or has he lost her forever? God reaches out to Esau again, but will it be in time?

Sample

The blistering heat from the angry flames licked skyward from the sodbuster’s cabin and seemed to singe the unkempt whiskers on Esau’s face. Hot as hell’s fire. Beads of moisture cropped up on his neck. Unsure if it was the unforgiving heat, the muggy Texas night, or the thought of hell’s eternal inferno that broke him out in such a sudden sweat, he shivered.

Esau’s greasy black locks poked out from beneath his black felt hat, tickling just inside the collar of his duster. He slapped at his itchy neck. It had been weeks since the Covington-Jones Gang had been through anything resembling a town, and the result was that the lot of them were sorely in need of haircuts. Esau included.

His mount, the stolen nag with the Rockin’ R brand, huffed heavily in the smoky air. Her sides heaved and her head dipped low.

Tristan Jones turned in the saddle, his thin lips curled into a sneer. “Sounds like that horse ain’t well.” The gang leader’s laugh was sadistic. “Might have you shoot ’er just to prove your salt, greenhorn!” The irony of the red-head’s fiery temper matching the events of the evening wasn’t lost on Esau.

Esau’s stomach churned. Sure, since taking up with the Covington-Jones gang, they’d pulled some harebrained stunts, but there hadn’t been any bloodshed. Yet.

Pushing the uneasiness down deep in his gut, Esau gazed at the blazing homestead and tried to ignore Tristan’s cackling laugh. As he stared at the inferno, the image of the church he’d attended as a boy flashed before his eyes. For a moment, he could hear his mother’s cries all over again. He shook his head.

“What’s the matter with you, Fitzpatrick?” Leonard Covington spat a stream of tobacco juice from atop his plundered horse. Of course, his nag wasn’t huffing. “Look like you seen a ghost.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A burst of lightning to the south made chills dance down Esau’s backbone. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me.” Against his better judgment, he let his gaze flicker over to the newly-homeless couple that crouched together beneath a gnarled oak tree. They had been trying to look inconspicuous, no doubt. Unfortunately, the old woman, clutching a thin shawl about her shoulders, had commenced to crying, thus winning Esau’s attention. And Tristan Jones’s. The woman’s husband, hunched from age, chattered in what sounded like German.

Maybe the rain will put the fire out before their whole house burns up, Esau caught himself thinking. He corrected the thought quickly. Don’t matter no how. We hate land-grubbing Germans. After all, that was what Tristan said all the time, and he was the leader of this outfit.

Joseph Covington followed their stare to the elderly couple. He cleared his throat in a series of rapid barks. “Why not just shoot them Germans, Lennie?” He leaned in the saddle, a hungry gleam in his eyes. “Keep ’em from goin’ and stealin’ some more of our land, somewhere.”

The German couple stared back at the notorious group of outlaws that had just looted them, burned their house, and left them destitute. Wicked grins twisted the lips of Leonard and Joseph. Tristan slowly drew his pistol from his hip.

Esau recognized the terror on the couple’s faces. They were utterly defenseless, left at the mercy of a gang of outlaws, and everyone knew it. He had seen, and heard, that same brand of terror more since joining up with the Covington-Jones boys than any other time in his eighteen years. On the faces of the bank tellers they’d robbed. In the watery eyes and trembling hands of the stagecoach passengers they’d held up. In the cracking voice of that rancher’s daughter who Leonard insisting having his way with before taking the very horses they rode now.

Me and Ella. That old couple could just as easy have been me and Ella. The memory of Ella Allen’s soft hair, the color of sunlight, pushed to the forefront of his brooding mind. He remembered the way it had shone despite the rain, falling in waves about her shoulders, that Sunday morning he’d left Paisley Settlement.

It had only been a month, but clearly defined in his mind was the way Ella’s grin had slowly melted as she stood in the green field beside the church in their hometown.

     A fat drop of rain plunked on his hat, causing the sweet memory of his Ella to fizzle into the night. It was probably better. That precious memory had no place here in his new life, anyhow. Best put the memory of Ella, the bright white church on the hill, and everything from Paisley Settlement away forever. Especially the memory of the fire.

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