Hathaway, Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith Hathaway, a Democrat. had a long career in elective and administrative service in Montana. Maggie V. Smith (later Hathaway) was elected Lewis and Clark County, Montana superintendent of schools in 1904 with 19,171 votes. She was re-elected in 1908. Articles about her state that she was county school superintendent from1894 to1910. It is currently only possible to verify her election in 1904 and 1908. In her 1905 superintendent's report, she commented on unequal pay, with male teachers receiving higher wages. In 1916 Hathway, the Democratic nominee, was the first of two women elected to the Montana state legislature. The second woman was Emma Ingalls, a Republican, from Flatheard County. Despite partisan differences, both representatives championed the cause of woman suffrage, child welfare, temperance, and women's rights including mother's pensions. Hathaway served three consecutive terms in the legislature. In 1920 the Democratic legislative caucus elected her minority floor leader. She was the first woman in U. S. history to hold this political position. She also served as the chairwoman of the Committee on Public Morals, Charities and Reforms. In 1922 she ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives from her Montana congressional district. From 1925 to 1937 Hathaway served as Montana's Secretary of the Bureau of Child Protection. Hathway was a temperance and public morals activist. She lobbied for the prohibition amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As a delegate to the 1920 Democratic National convention, she voted for a "dry" plank in the party's platform. One report states that she helped to enact laws to sterilize the "mentally unfit." She worked to spread the influence of the Methodist Church through the Montana League. Hathway was born in Ottawa, Ohio in 1867, the daughter of a Methodist Episcopal minister. She taught school in Ohio at the age of 15 and soon after in Helena, Montana when the family moved in 1894. She married educator Benjamin Tappan Hathaway in 1911. He died six months later.

In  1894 Maggie Smith Hathaway was elected school superintendent in Helena, Montana. She was the first woman elected to the Montana state legislature, representing Ravalli, in 1916.. She served for two terms, serving until 1922. Hathaway was originally from Ohio, but moved to Montana in the 1890s. She was an educator, and had taught school in both Ohio and Montana. Hathaway worked on the Montana suffrage campaign in 1914. While in the legislature Hathaway supported prohibition, labor rights, and the rights of women and mothers. In the early 1920s she served as the secretary of the of the Bureau of Child and Animal Protection