Rice, Emily S.

Emily S. Rice was elected Harper County ( Kansas) clerk in 1884 and served until 1888. Although Kansas was often progressive in matters of women's rights, since 1874 dissenters had challenged women's right to hold elective office. The qu...

Sharon, Mrs. C. J. M.

Mrs. C. Sharon was elected Marion County (Kansas) Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1872. She was re-elected in 1874. The state legislature had voted Kansas women school election suffrage in 1861. Sharon was one of several women wh...

Salter, Susanna Madora

In 1887 Susanna Salter, a 27-year old temperance activist, became the first woman in the United States to be elected to the position of mayor. The town was Argonia, Kansas, a small Quaker village with a population of less than five hundr...

Sullivan, Lucy M.

In 1889 Lucy M. Sullivan was elected mayor of Baldwin, Kansas.

Morse, Hannah B.

Hannah P. Morse was elected in 1888 to the Oskaloosa, Kansas town council. This was an historic election as the mayor and all of the town council members were women. By one account, after the success of Susanna Salter's term as mayor of ...

McGill, Alice

Alice McGill was elected as register of deeds (circa 1900) for Graham County, Kansas. She was one of several women to hold this position in Kansas in this period. Elected by all-male voters, these women often proved themselves in lower, ...

Wade, May Burbank

In 1896 Mary Burbank Wade was elected mayor of Ellis, Kansas. Coming nine years after Susanna Salter's election in Argonia, Kansas, Wade, like the other now-numerous women holding city and county office, found that the national press sca...

Webster, Ellen

Kansas ' first legislature, in 1861, gave women the right to vote in school elections. In 1872 Ellen Webster became superintendent of public instruction in Harvey County, Kansas. She took the oath of office in June, an event noted only i...

Wright, Mary Page

In 1874 Miss Mary Page Wright was elected Coffey County, Kansas superintendent of schools. Her election as superintendent furnished the Kansas Supreme Court the test case, Wright v. Noell, in the decision that sex is no disqualification ...

Wilson, Ella

Ella Wilson was elected mayor of Hunnewell, Kansas in 1911. Wilson and other female officials of the town were "at bitter odds with the all-male city council," men who had tried to keep the women from governing effectively. The state att...