Nellie Tayloe Ross was the first female governor in the US, entering politics after personal tragedy. Her husband, the Democratic governor of Wyoming, died in office, and Nellie was nominated to finish his term, making history in the process.
Born in Missouri in 1876, Nellie Tayloe worked as a schoolteacher before marrying lawyer William Ross in 1902 and settling in Cheyenne, Wyoming. William was elected in 1922, but died after complications from appendicitis, leaving behind Nellie and their three sons.
Ross was chosen to run as the Democratic nominee in the special election to fill her husband’s seat in November 1924. Populist messaging at the time painted the Republicans as the party of the urban elites — the same way it painted Democrats in 2016 — and the Republican Party was suffering from the fallout of the Teapot Dome scandal, helping propel Ross to victory.
Thus, the first state to grant women’s suffrage also became the first state headed by a woman. And, according to the Wyoming Historical Society, she won the seat by a larger margin than her late husband.
While Ross was serving in a position that had only ever been held by men, it wasn’t readily apparent to her why so many people had taken an interest in her story.
“I had not realized that the people over the country were so interested in me, or the situation in which destiny has placed me,” Ross said at the time.
During her two-year term, Ross pushed for tax cuts, support for farmers and labor protection. Those platforms weren’t enough to secure her re-election in 1926, however.
After her defeat, Ross gave public speeches and eventually became vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, he appointed Ross as director of the US Mint — she was also the first woman to hold that position.
Over two decades, Ross oversaw the Mint from the height of the Great Depression through the wartime metal shortages of WWII.
Ross spent the rest of her life in Washington, DC, before passing away in 1977 at the age of 101.