Ruth McCormick-Simms

Ruth McCormick-Simms

Ruth McCormick Simms (* 27. March 1880 in Cleveland , Ohio ; † 31 December 1944 in Chicago , Illinois ) was an American politician of the Republican Party and the first female congressman of the State of Illinois. She had an active role in the women's suffrage movement in the United States.

Life

Ruth Hanna was the only daughter of the industrialist and US Senator for Ohio, Mark Hanna (1837-1904), and his wife Charlotte Rhodes, daughter of the Illinois Senator, Daniel P. Rhodes. She attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights , the Dobbs Ferry School in New York and the renowned College Miss Porter's School in Farmington . In 1903, in Cleveland, Ruth Hanna married the editor and publisher of the Chicago Daily Tribune , Joseph Medill McCormick (1877-1925). After marrying, the couple lived in Byron , where an agricultural operation , and a dairy operated. Her husband, a friend of future President Theodore Roosevelt , was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1912 . Four years later (1918) he defeated incumbent Senator J. Hamilton Lewis as a Republican candidate in the election campaign for the US Senatorial office in Illinois .

The politically active McCormick was a member of the Republican National Committee between 1919 and 1924 . After the early death of her husband in 1925, his widow fought harder for women's rights and was elected to the 71st Congress in 1929 as the first woman for Illinois . Congressman McCormick ran against the Democratic candidate J. Hamilton Lewis, against whom her late husband had won twelve years earlier. She lost the election in the fall of 1930. In 1932 she founded the Sandia Preparatory School and in 1938 the Manzano Day School . In the early 1930s, Ruth McCormick was remarried to the Congressman and later Senator from New Mexico , Albert G. Simms (1882-1964). Ruth McCormick-Simms died of complications from cancer in Chicago at the age of 64 . She was buried in Albuquerque .

Awards

• 2006 Hall of Fame, Illinois

literature

• Kristie Miller: Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics , Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press (1992)

Web links

• Ruth McCormick-Simms in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Ruth Hanna McCormick (Eng.)