Surrounded by witnesses and family members, Nellie Tayloe Ross was sworn in as Wyoming’s governor on Jan. 5, 1925.
As the 20th century hit its quarter mark, Prohibition was on, televisions had yet to be invented and Native Americans had finally won U.S. citizenship. Wyoming, a frontier state, had fewer than 200,000 residents. But on that day, it made history by inaugurating America’s first female governor.
This wasn’t Wyoming’s only pioneering step toward women’s rights. In 1869, its territorial Legislature passed a bill granting Wyoming women the right to vote and hold office — the first measure of its kind in the country, and a full 50 years before states ratified the 19th Amendment. In 1870, Esther Hobart Morris of South Pass City was appointed justice of the peace, becoming the first woman to hold official government office in the U.S. That same year, Louisa Swain of Laramie became the county’s first woman to vote with full equal political rights as a man in the 1870 general election.
Still, when Green River High School students in Bridgette Nielsen’s history class learned about Gov. Ross, they agreed that she deserves commemoration on this 100th anniversary. The classroom project they initiated grew into an official proclamation of Nellie Tayloe Ross Day on Sunday.
The class drafted a proclamation during a student-directed learning opportunity — a style promoted by Gov. Mark Gordon’s Reimagining and Innovating the Delivery of Education initiative, which aims to refresh the state’s models of education. The school’s district was selected as one of nine pilot participants during the program’s first year in 2023.
Gordon joined Nielsen, her class and residents of Sweetwater County in late December to make the proclamation official.
Gordon was impressed with the proclamation, he said in a statement. “It embodies the timeless attributes of Nellie Tayloe Ross, especially noting her ‘steadfast commitment to public service, her advocacy for banking reform, public health, and education, and her unwavering dedication to the well-being of Wyoming Citizens.’”
Ross’ own path to the governor’s seat resulted from personal misfortune.
She was born in Missouri, but moved to Cheyenne around 1902 after marrying her husband, William Ross. He was a Cheyenne lawyer and a Democrat with political ambitions, and he was elected governor in 1922.
But less than two years after he took office, Ross died suddenly after suffering appendicitis, leaving his wife with three sons to raise and family debts to pay. Prodded by supporters, the former first lady ran for his vacated seat, campaigning in the black of mourning. She won by 8,000 votes.
“I’ve often said it was just a chain of circumstances that projected me into public life,” Ross told a radio interviewer in the Wyoming History documentary “Nellie Tayloe Ross – A Governor First.” “And there were so many women who I really feel deserved that opportunity before it was forthcoming to me. But it just seemed to be destiny that I was the one to come forward.”
She ran for reelection after her first term but was defeated by Republican Frank Emerson. Ross went on to become a speaker on the popular Chautauqua circuit before notching another first as the first female director of the U.S. Mint. Though she spent much of her life in Washington, D.C., she was buried in Wyoming.
I’m saddened when I think that she is, so far, our one and only woman governor. I hope that one day Wyoming will live up to our Equality State motto.
I lived in Ross Hall when a student at the University of Wyoming. We never said “”Nellie Tayloe Ross Hall” and all these years I thought it was “Taylor”/ Thanks for an article that filled in a little of her life. And thanks to the Green River High School students in Bridgette Nielsen’s history class for giving her honor.