LORI VAN PELT Special to the Star-Tribune | Posted: Saturday, February 28, 2004 12:00 am
LABEL: Women's History Month
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WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES
Estelle Reel, the first woman elected to statewide office, became Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wyoming in 1895.
SARATOGA - She campaigned across the prairie with the best of the men, dancing through scandal. Her political acumen made her the highest-ranking woman of her day to serve in the federal government, and when she got to Washington, D.C., she wore a $2,000 Parisian gown.
In 1895, Estelle Reel became the first woman in the nation to be elected to statewide office. She promoted herself with finesse, eventually earning a federal appointment from President McKinley.
March is Women's history month, but Reel, despite her hutzpah, is a lesser known figure in Wyoming lore.
Phil Roberts, associate professor of history at the University of Wyoming, says Reel "had extraordinary grit," although she has been somewhat overlooked by historians. She is not as well-remembered as other famous women office-holders like Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman to serve in Congress, and Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming, the first woman governor, he says.
That may be because Reel was elected as Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), "a position many people identify with a woman's job anyway (and because later) she left Wyoming and went to work for the federal government. After leaving federal service, she married a hops farmer in the state of Washington and dropped out of public life. People just forgot about her."
Campaigning presented a variety of challenges for a frontier female, and Roberts says any woman running for office at that time had to be "a brave soul."
In 1894, Reel sent campaign brochures containing her photograph to voters throughout Wyoming, reportedly causing numerous cowboys to ride as many as sixty miles to cast their ballots for the pretty woman candidate. She traveled with her Republican counterparts - all men - throughout the state on stagecoaches, on horseback, and in wagons to speak to voters, often dancing with them at the dances held following political rallies.
Wyoming's governor, John E. Osborne, a Democrat, questioned the propriety of a single female traveling unaccompanied with men, and rumors abounded that Reel would marry her opponent, Democrat Arthur J. Matthews, if she lost. The talk died quickly. Matthews was already married.
Sarah Bohl, a University of Wyoming graduate student completing her master's thesis on Reel, says Reel was determined to show women were up to the challenges of democracy.
"She was determined to hit the campaign trail with as much vigor and enthusiasm as the men who were running, and this showed people everywhere that women politicians could be equals with men," Bohl said.
At the time, 300 of Wyoming's 367 schoolteachers were females, and all but one of the twelve county superintendents were women. Reel parlayed her success as Laramie County Superintendent into her run for the state's top education position.
She was born in 1862 in Illinois and educated in Chicago, St. Louis and Boston before arriving in Wyoming Territory in the mid-1880s.
She taught school in Cheyenne for several years before being twice-elected to the county superintendent position. In her first election, she earned the largest majority of votes received by a candidate at that time.
Although she was the first woman elected as SPI, she was not the first female to serve in that position. Minnie Slaughter had been appointed in 1890 to finish the term of her father, John Slaughter, who had fallen ill during his service.
Bohl says Reel "had a great determination to prove she was worthy of the office."
In the new position, she was in charge of Wyoming's schools and served on the Land Commission and the Board of Charities and Reform. She performed clerical tasks for both boards in addition to fulfilling her duties as SPI. She earned a salary of $2,000, an amount some thought outrageously high for a female, and she supported equal pay for equal work even though male teachers in Wyoming earned $58 per month while women received only $45.
Bohl says Democratic newspapers of the time pounded Reel's Republican male counterparts but commended Reel for her hard work, nonpartisan stance, and fairness.
"I think that in this way she set an excellent example of how today's politicians should act, both men and women," she says.
Reel campaigned for William McKinley in his presidential bid in 1898. In return, she won an appointment as the National Superintendent of Indian Schools, becoming the first and only woman to hold that post, and the first woman to receive Senate confirmation.
She resigned her Wyoming office to tend her new duties in the east. She attended McKinley's inauguration, wearing a $2,000 Parisian gown which is today displayed at the Toppenish Museum in Toppenish, Wash.
Photographs of Reel show her fondness for fine clothing.
In her new federal position, she visited Indian schools throughout the country. The prevailing policies of the day dictated that Indians needed help to assimilate into the culture of white society. Reel wrote a book, "A Course of Study for the Indian Schools of the United States - Industrial and Literary," which among other things, gave instructions in sewing and cooking.
She traveled 65,900 miles during her first three years, mostly by train, and served for 12 years under three different presidents.
Bohl suggests that Reel's service during " a rather dark period in the history of Indian education" likely has also contributed to her fading from the limelight.
In 1910, when Congress eliminated funding for her position, Reel married Washington state rancher Cort Meyer, foregoing any more public service and adjusting to life as a private citizen. The couple, who had no children, resided near Toppenish, Wash. Reel outlived her husband by twelve years.
She wrote her own obituary, changing it often, and titled the final version, "A Woman Who Held Many Offices in Her Time." She died in 1959 at the age of 96.
NOTE: Information for this article came from the Estelle Reel collection at the Wyoming State Archives and the Toppenish Museum in Toppenish, Washington; Wyoming Blue Book, and from Lori Van Pelt's book, Capital Characters of Old Cheyenne, the second volume in the Dreamers and Schemers series, forthcoming from High Plains Press.