Background
Nellie Tayloe Ross was born near St. Joseph, Mo. , one of four children of James Wynns Tayloe, a merchant and farmer, and Elizabeth Blair.
Nellie Tayloe Ross was born near St. Joseph, Mo. , one of four children of James Wynns Tayloe, a merchant and farmer, and Elizabeth Blair.
Because of poor health and the early death of her mother, Nellie Tayloe attended public schools intermittently and received private tutoring. She took additional courses to become a kindergarten teacher, but her health ruled out a classroom career.
Ross grew to a woman of medium height, with brown hair, "and very large, expressive blue eyes. " Stylish hats would become a characteristic feature of her public appearances later in life. Over the next fifteen years, William Ross, her husband, became an important figure in the Wyoming Democratic party. His wife raised their children and was active in the Episcopal Church, the Boy Scouts, and the Cheyenne Woman's Club, where she developed the qualities that would one day help her meet the demands of public office.
In 1922, William Ross was elected governor of Wyoming. He became ill during the autumn of 1924 and died on October 2 with more than two years of his term remaining. Since it occurred more than thirty days before the next general election, Ross's death left the state's politicians with the problem of picking a successor to serve the unexpired term. Both Republicans and Democrats held conventions to select candidates, and the Democrats chose Nellie Tayloe Ross. "I was overwhelmed, " she said later, "and the first thing I knew I was committed. "
Ross did not campaign in the short time that remained before the election. In two public letters, she pledged to carry out her husband's program and to do nothing that would justify the charge that "women should not be entrusted with high executive office. "
She received 43, 323 votes to 35, 527 for her Republican opponent, Eugene Sullivan, and was the only Democrat in Wyoming to win a statewide race. Sworn into office on January 5, 1925, she became America's first woman governor. Miriam A. Ferguson of Texas had also been elected governor in 1924, but she was inaugurated two weeks after Ross, who became a national celebrity overnight. "My opinion was asked on absurdly irrelevant subjects, " she later said; for example, people wrote to inquire if she intended to replace all male state employees with women. During the two years of her governorship, Ross faced a Republican legislature and a state government dominated by her political enemies.
One of Ross's close advisers was Joseph C. O'Mahoney, a Catholic who had ambitions for the United States Senate. This association brought forth charges that there was an invisible government in the Ross administration at a time when the Ku Klux Klan had influence in Wyoming politics. She vetoed a bill providing for a special election in the event that one of Wyoming's senators could not serve. Republicans alleged that "A vote for the woman Governor is a vote for a Democratic Senator" since one of the incumbent senators, the elderly Francis E. Warren, seemed likely to die before his term ended in 1930, which would enable Ross to appoint O'Mahoney.
To run against Ross in 1926, the Republicans nominated Frank C. Emerson, an engineer, arguing that the governorship was not for women. After an intense battle, Ross was defeated by a little more than 1, 300 votes. Despite her defeat, Ross became vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1928 after having seconded Alfred E. Smith's nomination at the national convention that same year. In a pamphlet that she wrote in support of Smith, she argued that his election would produce a president "who thinks of government in terms of the men, women, and children it should help. "
Over the next four years, she directed Democratic activities aimed at female voters. The party, she wrote in 1930, believed that "women are not voters merely, but co-workers with men. " She campaigned for the Democratic ticket vigorously in 1932 and became close to Eleanor Roosevelt. Early in 1933, she urged the First Lady and other women in the party to consider the numerous applications women sent in for federal appointments.
Ross was appointed director of the United States Mint and took office on May 3, 1933. The operations of the Mint were curtailed because of the Great Depression, leaving Ross with only a skeleton force of employees. During the two decades that followed, she dealt with the inflow of gold into the United States as the economy improved. She also directed the management of coinage during World War II, including the unpopular zinc-coated penny. When she left office in 1953, she had been responsible for approximately two-thirds of the domestic coinage that the Mint had produced since its founding in 1792.
In retirement, Ross was still in demand as a speaker. After celebrating her one-hundredth birthday in 1976, she died the following year. Her funeral was held in Cheyenne, where she was buried.
The accident of her husband's death had brought Nellie Ross into politics and national prominence. As governor and as a federal official, she became a leader among the political women who exercised influence during the New Deal years. A newspaper reporter said of Ross that she was a woman who "when called on, can meet any and every situation with distinction, yet always remain feminine. " During her two years as a governor Ross insisted that certain banking legislation not restrict the powers of the governor and used the threat of the veto to have such language removed from the bill. She enforced Prohibition and once removed a county sheriff for misconduct involving the liquor laws.
Quotations: Ross said: "Early in my teens I was vain as a peacock, loved pretty clothes. "
Nellie married William Bradford Ross, a lawyer, in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 11, 1902. The couple had four sons, one of whom died in an accident in February 1906.
