Name Edna Beard | Died 1928 | |
Edna Louisa Beard (July 25, 1877 – September 18, 1928) was the first woman legislator in Vermont; she was the first woman elected to the Vermont House of Representatives, and the first woman elected to the Vermont Senate.
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Early life
Beard was born in Chenoa, Illinois, and her family returned to Orange, Vermont in 1883. She graduated from Spaulding High School in 1896, served as a teacher and superintendent of the Orange town schools beginning in 1906, and spent 16 years as town treasurer (from 1912-1928).
Political career
In 1920, passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution enabled women to vote in state and federal elections in Vermont. Beard ran for the Vermont House of Representatives; she lost the Republican primary to Burt L. Richardson, and decided to run in the general election on the "Citizen's Party" line. Between the primary and general elections, 40 women in Orange registered to vote for the first time; in November, Beard defeated Richardson by 38 votes. She thus became the first woman elected to the Vermont House of Representatives.
She was given the first choice of seats in the House, and, as reported by the Rutland Herald, "She chose seat no 146, and for a long time no man had the courage to select seat no. 145, which adjoined hers. The seat stood vacant for over an hour until Horatio Luce of Pomfret took the dare of his fellow members and sat down beside Miss Beard amid a storm of laughter and applause."
Her first bill in the Vermont House of Representatives, Act 218, provided $2 a week child support for women whose husbands were "incapacitated by an incurable disease." It passed.
In 1922 she was elected to Orange County's seat in the Vermont Senate, and was the first woman to serve in that body. She served one term, 1923 to 1925 and held a leadership role as Chairwoman of the Senate Library Committee. Her first successful bill as Senator made it possible for county sheriffs to hire women as deputies.
She was urged by supporters to enter the race for lieutenant governor in 1924, but left politics because she was in ill health. She remained active in her local Congregational church until she died from a stroke.
Beard died in Orange on September 18, 1928, and was buried at Orange Center Cemetery in Orange.
There is a portrait of Edna Beard, by painter Ruth Mould, in the Vermont Statehouse.