Ruth Hanna McCormick

Ruth McCormick
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's At-large district
In office March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1931 Seat A
Preceded by	Henry Rathbone
Succeeded by	William Dieterich
Personal details
Born	Ruth Hanna (1880-03-27)March 27, 1880 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Died	December 31, 1944(1944-12-31) (aged 64) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Joseph McCormick (1903–1925) Albert Simms (1931–1944)
Children	Bazy Katrina John
Religion	Protestantism

Ruth McCormick Simms (née Ruth Hanna; March 27, 1880 – December 31, 1944) was a United States Representative from Illinois and active in the women's suffrage movement.

Early Life and Education

Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms was the daughter of Mark Hanna and the wife of Sen. Joseph Medill McCormick and later of Congressman Albert Gallatin Simms, hence her maiden name, Ruth Hanna, and name upon death, Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms, are also seen in the literature.

McCormick was born in Cleveland, Ohio where she attended Hathaway Brown School. Later, she attended The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York and the Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. She owned and operated a dairy and breeding farm near Byron, Illinois and was the publisher and president of the Rockford Consolidated Newspapers in Rockford, Illinois.

In 1903 she married Joseph "Medill" McCormick. They had three children:

• Ruth "Bazy" McCormick Miller Tankersley, (1921–2013) She was publisher of the Washington Times-Herald and founded Al-Marah Arabians, a breeding and training farm for Arabian horses now in Tucson, Arizona, which is still operating.^[1]
• Katrina McCormick (1913–2011), who married Courtland Dixon Barnes, Jr.^[2]
• John Medill McCormick, called "Johnny," died in a mountain-climbing accident in 1938.

Medill served in both the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate prior to his death at age 48 on February 25, 1925.^[3] Although not publicized as such at the time, his death was considered a suicide.^[4]

Career

Ruth McCormick served as the 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. She was an active worker for the suffrage amendment from 1913 until the United States Constitution was amended. From 1913 to 1914, she served as head of the Congressional Committee for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She took over leadership from Alice Paul, who went on to form the Congressional Union as a separate national suffrage organization. During her time as leader of the Congressional Committee, she produced an eight-reel melodrama Your Girl and Mine, which was intended to help gain support for the suffrage movement. The film never circulated broadly, despite critical praise from contemporary film reviewers, because the distribution agreement between NAWSA and the World Film Company fell apart shortly after the premiere in 1914 and the film was confined to private screenings.

McCormick was elected as a Republican to the Seventy-first Congress and served from March 4, 1929 to March 3, 1931 for the House of Representatives, at-large from Illinois. She was not a candidate for renomination in 1930 since she received the Republican nomination for United States Senator in which election she was unsuccessful. She resumed her newspaper interests. In 1932, she married Albert Gallatin Simms, of New Mexico, who was also a Member of the Seventy-first Congress and resided in Albuquerque, New Mexico.^[5] She moved to New Mexico with Simms to a ranch in northern Albuquerque. The property would become Los Poblanos, designed by John Gaw Meem in the Pueblo Revival Style. In 1932, she founded Sandia School, later becoming the Sandia Preparatory School. In 1938, she founded Manzano Day School. Albuquerque Academy’s land was donated by the Simms’ and Albuquerque Little Theatre was also founded by Ruth.^[6] She ran a radio station and two newspapers in this period and later purchased a 250,000–acre cattle and sheep ranch in Colorado.^[5] She developed pancreatitis following a fall from a horse in 1944,^[5] and died in Chicago, Illinois on December 31, 1944. She was buried in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Family tree

See also

• Woman's World's Fair

References

Sources

• United States Congress. "Ruth Hanna McCormick (id: M000372)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 
• 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.
• Hasara, Karen. "McCormick unsung heroine in U.S. politics." Illinois Issues. XIX. 7 (July 1993): 28.
• Shore, Amy. "Producing a National Suffrage Imaginary." Suffrage and the Silver Screen. Unpublished Dissertation: New York University, 2003.

External links

• Ruth Hanna McCormick at Find a Grave