May Tower Bigelow (April 13, 1866 - October 28, 1935) was an artist, lawyer, physician and state legislator serving in the

Colorado House of Representatives The Colorado House of Representatives is the lower house of the Colorado General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Colorado. The House is composed of 65 members from an equal number of constituent districts, with each distr ...

1919 session.

Biography

She was born April 13, 1866, in

St. Charles, Minnesota St. Charles is a city in Winona County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,735 at the 2010 census. It promotes itself as the gateway to Whitewater State Park, which is located north of the city on Minnesota State Highway 74. Histor ...

. She studied at Nebraska State University and

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

. After her education she started teaching, then progressed to be a mathematics instructor at the Nebraska State Normal College, now the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She then went on to study law and pass the Nebraska bar. She was an artist and made illustrations for a medical publication. She married Charles Wesley Bigelow an educator and banker, on May 16, 1891, and they had four children together and moved to Denver. Both her and her husband then went to Harvard University for postgraduate work, before going to Europe to study first in England then on to study medicine in the University of Munich in Germany. They returned to Colorado and she completed her study at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and obtained her doctor of medicine degree in June 1915.

Political career

She was one of two women to run to serve in the

in 1918 on the Republican ticket along with

Mabel Ruth Baker Mabel Ruth Baker (1880 - 19??) was an American politician. She was a state legislator in Colorado, serving multiple terms. Baker was believed to have been born on December 6, 1880, to Stephen Franklin and Irene Willard. Although she was noted ...

. Both Bigelow and Baker won seats in the house for the session starting on January 1, 1919, with another woman Agnes Riddle serving in the state senate in the same session. She was a Republican and represented the Denver district in the house. In a special session of the legislature held on December 8, 1919, a resolution put forth by these three women legislators sought to ratify the ''Federal Suffrage Amendment'' that would then go on to be the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1920 she also ran in the Republican Primary for the office of ''Superintendent of Public Instruction'' but lost to Katherine L. Craig who received 67.7% of the vote. Her final attempt at political office was to run for Mayor of Denver in 1927 but she was unsuccessful.

Murder accusation and death

When not pursuing politics she ran a medical practice and run health clinics. In May 1935 she was accused of doing an illegal operation that resulted in the death of Ella Lea Moynahan the young wife of legislator James Moynahan from the 29th general assembly. Bigelow died October 28, 1935, from a blood clot on the brain, she was survived by her husband and three of her children. Her husband blamed the continued worry over the unresolved murder changes for quickening her death, a charge that Bigelow had strongly denied.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bigelow, May Tower People from St. Charles, Minnesota People from Denver Members of the Colorado House of Representatives Women state legislators in Colorado People charged with murder Deaths from thrombosis 1866 births 1935 deaths Radcliffe College alumni 20th-century American women physicians 20th-century American physicians 20th-century American women politicians 20th-century American legislators Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni University of Nebraska at Kearney people Nebraska lawyers Harvard University alumni University of Colorado School of Medicine alumni American expatriates in Germany 19th-century American women lawyers 19th-century American lawyers 20th-century Colorado politicians