Ruth Hanna McCORMICK, Congress, IL (1880-1944)

McCORMICK, Ruth Hanna, (daughter of Marcus Alonzo Hanna, wife of Joseph Medill McCormick and of Albert Gallatin Simms), a Representative from Illinois; born in Cleveland, Ohio, March 27, 1880; attended Hathaway Brown School in Cleveland, Dobbs Ferry (N.Y.) School, and Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn.; owned and operated a dairy and breeding farm near Byron, Ill.; publisher and president of the Rockford Consolidated Newspapers (Inc.), Rockford, Ill.; chairman of the first woman’s executive committee of the Republican National Committee, and an associate member of the national committee 1919-1924, in the latter year becoming the first elected national committeewoman from Illinois and served until 1928; active worker for the suffrage amendment from 1913 until the Constitution was amended; elected as a Republican to the Seventy-first Congress (March 4, 1929-March 3, 1931); was not a candidate for renomination in 1930, having received the Republican nomination for United States Senator, in which election she was unsuccessful; resumed her newspaper interests; married Albert Gallatin Simms, of New Mexico, who was also a Member of the Seventy-first Congress; and resided in Albuquerque, N.Mex.; died in Chicago, Ill., on December 31, 1944; interment in Fairview Cemetery, Albuquerque, N.Mex.

Bibliography

Miller, Kristie. Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics, 1880-1944. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992; Miller, Kristie. “Ruth Hanna McCormick and the Senatorial Election of 1930.” Illinois Historical Journal 81 (Autumn 1988): 191-210.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present