Ruth Hanna McCormick

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Ruth Hanna McCormick
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's at-large district
In office March 4, 1929 – March 3, 1931
Born	March 27, 1880(1880-03-27) Cleveland, Ohio, United States
Died	November 25, 1944 (aged 22) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Joseph Medill McCormick

Ruth Hanna, Ruth Hanna McCormick or Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms (March 27, 1880–December 31, 1944) was a United States Representative from Illinois. She was the second woman elected to congress from Illinois.

Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms was the daughter of Mark Hanna and the wife of Sen. Joseph Medill McCormick and later Albert G. Simms, hence her maiden name, Ruth Hanna, and name upon death, Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms, are also seen in the literature. McCormick took an active role in the women's suffrage movement.

McCormick was born in Cleveland, Ohio where she attended Hathaway Brown School. Later, she attended the The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York and the Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. She owned and operated a dairy and breeding farm near Byron, Illinois and was the publisher and president of the Rockford Consolidated Newspapers in Rockford, Illinois.

McCormick was the chairman of the first woman’s executive committee of the Republican National Committee, and an associate member of the national committee 1919-1924, in the latter year becoming the first elected national committeewoman from Illinois and served until 1928. Ruth was the first American woman on the cover of TIME on April 28 1928. She was an active worker for the suffrage amendment from 1913 until the United States Constitution was amended. From 1913 to 1914, she served as head of the Congressional Committee for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She took over leadership from Alice Paul, who went on to form the Congressional Union as a separate national suffrage organization. During her time as leader of the Congressional Committee, she produced an eight-reel melodrama Your Girl and Mine, which was intended to help gain support for the suffrage movement. The film never circulated broadly, despite critical praise from contemporary film reviewers, because the distribution agreement between NAWSA and the World Film Corporation fell apart shortly after the premiere in 1914 and the film was confined to private screenings.

McCormick was elected as a Republican to the Seventy-first Congress (March 4, 1929-March 3, 1931) (House of Representatives, Illinois, At Large) but was not a candidate for renomination in 1930 as she had received the Republican nomination for United States Senator in which election she was unsuccessful. She resumed her newspaper interests. She married Albert Gallatin Simms, of New Mexico, who was also a Member of the Seventy-first Congress and resided in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1932 she founded Sandia Preparatory School and in 1938 she founded Manzano Day School. She died in Chicago, Illinois in 1944 and was buried in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

[edit] Bibliography

• Ruth Hanna McCormick at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Miller, Kristie. Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics, 1880-1944. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
• Miller, Kristie. “Ruth Hanna McCormick and the Senatorial Election of 1930.” Illinois Historical Journal, 81 (Autumn 1988): 191-210.
• Shore, Amy. "Producing a National Suffrage Imaginary." Suffrage and the Silver Screen. Unpublished Dissertation: New York University, 2003.