Clara Cressingham

Clara Cressingham (1863-c. 1906)^{[1][Note 1]} was one of the first women elected to serve in any state legislature in the United States. She was also the first woman to serve in a leadership position in any state legislature.^[3]

Legislative career

Colorado became the first state in which women obtained the right to vote through popular election in 1893.^[4] The following year, on November 6, 1894, three women were elected to serve in the Colorado House of Representatives. Besides Cressingham, they included Carrie C. Holly and Frances S. Klock.^[5] All three were Republicans and were sworn into office in 1895. Each served one term, from 1895 to 1896.^[3]

At 32 years old,^[6] Clara Cressingham was the youngest of these three legislators. After she and her husband had moved from New York, she was employed as a writer, and she was the mother of two children when elected to the Colorado General Assembly.^[7] As Secretary of the House Republican Caucus, Cressingham was the first woman to fill a leadership position in an American legislature. ^[8]

Cressingham is credited with introducing the first law introduced by a woman in the United States. It set a government–provided bounty of $3 per ton on sugar beets raised in the state and sold to a factory within its borders, thus boosting the budding Colorado sugar beet industry.^[9] Other bills she introduced during her two years in the House addressed the creation of a state board of arbitration and a system of free schools. Along with the other two women in the legislature, she successfully supported a bill to create homes for delinquent girls.^[9]

Notes

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