Preston, Josephine Corliss

In 1912 Josephine Preston was elected Washington state superintendent of public instruction. She was re-elected to serve terms through to 1928. She was the first woman to be elected to state office in Washington. Preston taught school in Washington and in 1908 won the first of five yearly elections as Walla Walla County school superintendent. Women won the vote in Washington State in 1910, helping Preston to gain, in 1912, the Republican nomination as the party candidate for state superintendent of schools. She defeated Mary Monroe, principal of the Spokane Public School system. In 1928 Noah D. Showalter challenged Preston in the Republican primary and won, ending her sixteen years in the office. Preston won notice nationally as Washington's first woman state superintendent, and for policies such as building cottages for teachers in order to attract more candidates to rural areas, and to provide more dignified housing for those already there. Preston was selected for the new Women's Committee of the Republican National Party. Josephine Corliss was born in Minnesota and began teaching school at the age of fourteen. She moved to the state of Washington with her family in the 1890s. She was briefly married to Herbert P. Preston, from whom she was divorced.