She was born on August 26, 1881 in Newport, Rhode Island, United States, the daughter of Lloyd Stephens Bryce, owner and editor of the North American Review and United States minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and of Edith Cooper, granddaughter of Peter Cooper. Because of her father's social and political connections, she was early accustomed to meeting eminent persons and arguing issues of the day. Theodore Roosevelt was said to have valued her friendship and views.
She was educated in private schools.
After marriage she shared a determination of her husband Gifford Pinchot to be effective in both private and public life. In 1914, when her husband entered Pennsylvania politics, she began to work vigorously within the Republican party and on the speech-making and conference circuits to advance his interests, as well as her own. She was active in her husband's successful campaign for governor in 1923, and as a public figure in her own right she fought for enforcement of the Volstead Act.
In 1926 she contributed $40, 000 to her husband's unsuccessful attempt to win nomination as candidate for the U. S. Senate over Republican leader William S. Vare, and she herself made headlines by challenging Vare to public debate. In a letter published in 1926, addressed to a textile manufacturer, she urged recognition of the workers in his plant who were on strike for the right to join a union. In 1928, Pinchot made her own bid for a seat in Congress, opposing the incumbent, Louis T. McFadden. She campaigned well, attracting audiences responsive to her clear, pointed statements. By then her controlled gestures. Although she was defeated, she continued to interest women's rights advocates, unionists, and others.
So vigorously did Pinchot urge her views that she was rejected as a speaker in the presidential campaign of 1928 because of Herbert Hoover's opposing programs on such issues as water power and farm aid. In 1930 she was barred from speaking before the Pennsylvania Federation of Women's Clubs, then in conservative hands.
With the Great Depression and her husband's return to the governorship (1931 - 1935), Pinchot entered her most impressive period in public life. For a time she was, among women concerned with social issues, second in visibility only to Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom as a child she had gone to dancing school.
In February 1933, as the governor's wife, Pinchot gave a dinner for Eleanor Roosevelt and forty-eight others that entered into the lore of the era. The meal of soup, corn bread, cabbage rolls stuffed with salmon and rice, hamburger steaks, salad, and ice cream was reported as costing five and a half cents per person. In August of that year she was given a union card by the American Federation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers, whose cause she had supported.
Pinchot made another attempt to gain a congressional seat in 1932, but was defeated in the primaries by McFadden, a result that was seen as a blow to her husband's prestige. She remained newsworthy, being reported as intending to succeed Pinchot as governor if he should win the senatorship. In 1934 he made his final, unsuccessful attempt to reach the Senate. Pinchot's relinquishing of the governorship took his wife substantially out of the news. She still made appearances, notably in connection with international peace, but her major work was done.
She died in Washington, District of Columbia.
Cornelia Elizabeth Pinchot was well-known as the wife of Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot, famous for being a meddlesome political spouse. She promoted women's causes; was supporter of trade unions and a member of several with heavy female membership. Besides, she was an influencial delegate to the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources in 1949.
She had concluded that women must make their impress on politics, and had marched in woman suffrage parades. Pinchot's earliest cause was the need to restore vitality to the individual vote. Women, she insisted, must take an interest in the primaries, in which party leaders were elected. They must contribute money to campaigns, and see that the money was legitimately spent.
Her spare figure was well established in the public mind, as were her red hair and bright blue eyes. She was attractive, dressed in flamboyant clothes.
She married Gifford Pinchot on August 15, 1914; they had one son.
