Mary D. Lowman
Mary D. Lowman | |
---|---|
Mary D. Lowman, ca. 1893 | |
Oskaloosa, Kansas | |
In office 1888–1890 | |
Personal details | |
Born |
Mary D. McGaha January 27, 1842 Indiana County, Pennsylvania |
Died |
June 2, 1912 70) Oskaloosa, Kansas | (aged
Nationality | American |
Spouse(s) | George W. Lowman |
Occupation | Schoolteacher |
Mary D. (McGaha) Lowman (January 27, 1842 – June 12, 1912)[1][2][3] was a schoolteacher and the mayor of Oskaloosa, Kansas, in the late 1880s. She was the first woman in Kansas to be elected mayor with a city council composed entirely of women.
Biography
Mary D. McGaha was born on a farm in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.[1] She became a schoolteacher and in 1866 married a man named George W. Lowman, with whom she had two children.[1] They moved to Kansas and settle in the small town of Oskaloosa, where she became a teacher of recently emancipated black students.[1]
In 1885, she became the city's deputy county clerk and deputy register of deeds.[1][4] In 1888, the women of Oskaloosa, dissatisfied with poor city management, decided to run an entire slate of women for municipal office.[1][4] (Although American women did not yet have a national right to vote, Kansas women had been given the right to vote in some municipal elections one year earlier.)[5] The "Oskaloosa Improvement Ticket"[6] won by a two-to-one margin,[4] making Lowman the first woman in Kansas to serve as mayor with a city council composed entirely of women.[1] Newspapers across the country covered the unusual election of an all-women municipal administration.[2] Lowman was elected only a year after Susanna M. Salter became the nation's first woman mayor.
When Lowman and her council took office, the city treasury was empty and the city in debt.[1] Lowman and her 5-member council were re-elected after their first year in office, with two members of the council being replaced by other women.[1][2] After two years in office, Lowman and her council left the city with a replenished treasury.[1]
Lowman died in 1912 of burns received when her clothing caught fire at a cookstove.[2]
References
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- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Willard, Frances Elizabeth. A woman of the century: Fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. New York: Moulton, 1893, p. 476.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Martin, Geo. W., ed. Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society 1911–1912. Topeka, KS: State Printing Office, 1912, p. 400.
- 1 2 3 One source (Martin 1912) lists Lowman as 72 at the time of her death, which if correct would make her birth year 1840 rather than 1842 (Willard 1893).
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The Latest Kansas Innovation: A Municipal Government Composed of Women". Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, vols. 65–67, pp. 149–151 (April 21, 1888).
- 1 2 3 4 Weatherford, Doris. Women in American Politics: History and Milestones. SAGE Publications, 2012, p. 240.
- 1 2 3 4 Murray, Janet Horowitz, and Myra Stark, eds. The Englishwoman's Review of Social and Industrial Questions: 1888, Routledge Library Editions, n.p.