Alice Mary Robertson

Alice Mary Robertson

Alice Mary Robertson (born January 2, 1854 in Tullahassee , Wagoner County , Oklahoma , † July 1, 1931 in Muskogee , Oklahoma) was an American politician . Between 1921 and 1923 she represented Oklahoma's second congressional electoral district in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Alice Robertson was born as the daughter of William Robertson and his wife Ann in the area of ​​the Creek Nation in what was then Indian territory , where their parents were missionaries. There she grew up in her early years and was tutored by her parents. Later, they visited the Elmira College in Elmira ( New York ).

Between 1873 and 1879 she worked in the Indian Authority in Washington, DC Afterwards she returned to her homeland, where she taught in the Indian school in Tullahassee as a teacher. Between 1880 and 1882 she was a teacher at the Indian School in Carlisle ( Pennsylvania ), before returning again to the Indian Territory, where she Nuyaka Mission founded. She also worked again as a teacher in Okmulgee . From a girls' school for Indians, on the also taught them later passed the Henry Kendall College today's University of Tulsa forth.

Between 1900 and 1905 Robertson was the first school councilor in the Indian area of ​​her homeland and from 1905 to 1913 she was the post office owner in Muskogee. Her experience in looking after the troops during the First World War later led to the establishment of the local Red Cross association in Muskogee.

Alice Robertson was a member of the Republican Party . In 1920, she became the first woman ever to beat an incumbent Congressman - in this case, William W. Hastings of the Democratic Party - and take his place in the US House of Representatives. Between March 4, 1921 and March 3, 1923, she was able to complete a term in Congress before she was subject to her predecessor, Hastings, in the 1922 elections. Robertson was only the second woman on this body after Jeannette Rankin from Montana , who had a term in Congress between 1917 and 1919. Amazingly, she was against the women's rights movement . She also opposed bills to improve maternity leave and child care . This earned her the support of the conservative society of the Daughters of the American Revolution .

After her tenure in Congress ended, Alice Robertson served in the social services of a veterans hospital in Muskogee in 1923. Then she ran a milk producing farm. She died in 1931 and was buried in Muskogee.

Web links

• Alice Mary Robertson in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Alice Mary Robertson in the database of Find a Grave (English)