Who was (or were) the first woman/women elected to Montana’s state legislature (either house)?
Note that Rankin is not who I’m thinking of. If you think she is, reread the question. Google seems fixated on her, however.
Why do you think there was a woman elected to Montana’s legislature in the early days?
He didn’t say early days. It could have happened last year and still fit the question.
I don’t know how badly the OP wants the information, but all states have historians or the equivalent. Or the legislature itself would. A letter - or an email if you can find the address - directly to that office would probably give the desired result.
You’ll have a better chance getting that info somewhere in Montana than here. But I will throw out Sen. Antoinette Fraser Rosell who served in the late 1960’s and early 1970s. I doubt its right, but its the earliest reference to a woman in the state house.
Dolly Akers was elected to the Montana State Legislature in 1932. One story in a 1950’s newspaper says she was the first. But another story says she was the “only woman” in the legislature at that point and the only Indian. She was 1/4 Indian.
I couldn’t find a 1932 news story about her though.
And now I see a Google hit that called her “Dolly Akers Cusker.”
Well, forget my last post.
Ms. Emma A. Ingalls was one of two Montana Assemblywomen in 1919. That’s as close as I can get you.
This may help:
Polycarp: Many thanks! I knew I could count on the acumen of the Dopers to figure this out.
It took samclem tracking down Emma Ingalls (I got hints she was a relative of Laura Ingalls Wilder in my digging, but didn’t follow them up) to find that – for some reason it was never indexed by any search engine under criteria like “Montana legislator/Assemblywoman woman/female” but only under “Ingalls.” So my gratitude goes to him.
And I always forget to use Google after coming up with hints from my newspaper databases. Good work Poly.
And to tie off a few loose ends:
[ul][li]Maggie Smith Hathaway seems to have been quite a woman – strong suffrage activist, to start with, but also extremely competent in a variety of fields as well. There are a couple of biographies of her, apparently still in print.[/li][li]Best evidence is that the two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1917-19, 1941-43) were the only elective offices ever held by the pacifistic Ms. Rankin – who spent time in California campaigning for women’s rights before moving to Montana and running for Congress.[/li][li]Opal Cat does not seem to have been elected to any state legislature, or to have received official greetings from any of them either.[/li][li]First women state legislators anywhere were three women elected to Colorado’s legislature in 1894; Wyoming was next, a couple of years later.[/li][li]While Colorado is famously “the equality state,” having granted women the vote since becoming a state in 1876, they were actually preceded by Washington, which permitted women the vote as a self-governing territory from 1869 (though of course it didn’t become a state until much later).[/li]For those moved to follow up on women in government, the Eagleton Center for Politics at Rutgers U. has an extensive database, much of which is available online.[/ul]
Another interesting woman I discovered whilst futzing around with this problem last night was Ella Knowles, who an article about the Bates College debate team implied that she was the first. She wasn’t, but she did lobby the Montana legislature to allow women to become lawyers, and then was the first women lawyer in the state. She barely lost election to Attorney General in 1892, but was appointed to Assistant Attorney General by the governor, who she later married.
Eh? 
Wyoming is the Equality State. It was the first in modern times to enfranchise women both as a territory (1869) and as a state (1890).
Aack! I must be in Egypt, the way my memory is misleading me lately – I’m getting to see Nile. 
GROUP HUG!
Seriously, thanks to you both. This is a sterling example of why the SDMB as a whole is wonderful, as opposed to merely being a collection of great individual posters.