Clara Cressingham (October 6, 1863 – 1906) was one of the first women elected to serve in any state legislature in the United States. She was also the first woman to serve in a leadership position in any state legislature.

Early life

Cressingham was born in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

on October 6, 1863, the daughter of Seth W. Howard. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she also attended public schooling. She married William H. Cressingham in 1883 and the family moved to Denver in 1890, where her husband worked as a

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. After she and her husband had moved from New York, she was employed as a writer, and she was the mother of two children when elected to the

Colorado General Assembly The Colorado General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Colorado. It is a bicameral legislature that was created by the 1876 state constitution. Its statutes are codified in the ''Colorado Revised Statutes'' (C.R.S.). The se ...

Legislative career

Colorado became the first state in which women obtained the right to vote through popular election in 1893. The following year, on November 6, 1894, three women were elected to serve 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 ...

. Besides Cressingham, they included Carrie C. Holly and Frances S. Klock. All three were Republicans and were sworn into office in 1895. Each served one term, from 1895 to 1896. At 32 years old, Clara Cressingham was the youngest of these three legislators. As Secretary of the House

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

Caucus, Cressingham was the first woman to fill a leadership position in an American legislature. Cressingham is credited with being the first woman to introduce a law in the United States. It set a government–provided bounty of $3 per ton on sugar beets raised in the state and sold to a factory within its borders, thus boosting the budding Colorado sugar beet industry. Other bills she introduced during her two years in the House addressed the creation of a state board of arbitration and a system of free schools. Along with the other two women in the legislature, she successfully supported a bill to create homes for "delinquent" girls. Cressingham died in 1906 of "rheumatism of the heart" at the age of 42.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cressingham, Clara 1863 births 1906 deaths Republican Party members of the Colorado House of Representatives Women state legislators in Colorado 19th-century American politicians 19th-century American women politicians