#WOMEN March 2

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Today is Day 2 of the 30-Day State Trivia Coach4aday Challenge. The goal is for thirty consecutive days post someone interesting about a state you have never lived in. Excited that a number of female leaders know have decided to join in the challenge. I choose Wyoming and today’s trivia category is WOMEN.

When it comes to Wyoming and the significance that WOMEN have played, I discovered a couple of interesting facts.

WOMEN and Wyoming

Voting privileges for all WOMEN in this country did not occur until the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1920. Wyoming was way ahead of that curve. In 1869, Wyoming territory became the first state to allow women with the age of 21 and above to exercise the right to vote. Researching this fact, I discovered that some state lawmakers passed that bill for the purpose of drawing new settlers to the state. In 1870 a 70-year-old grandmother named Louisa Gardner Swain became the first woman in the world to cast a ballot.

Second piece of trivia that applies to Wyoming WOMEN is they had the first female Governor. The wife of Governor William Bradford Ross became the governor after he died. Nellie Tayloe Ross finished her husband’s term from 1925 to 1927. She served as the 14th governor of the state, and to this day, Nellie Tayloe Ross is the only female governor in Wyoming’s history.

Estelle Reel in 1894 became the first female elected as State Superintendent of Public Instruction for Wyoming. In winning that election in 1894 she had to overcome opponents claims that the job was too complicated for a female.

Martha Symons Boies became the nation’s first female bailiff. Her first occurred during the first Wyoming grand jury that included both men and women in March 1870.