Preceded by Henry R. Rathbone Parents Mark Hanna Party Republican Party | Political party Republican Children Bazy Tankersley Name Ruth McCormick | |
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Born March 27, 1880
Cleveland, Ohio ( 1880-03-27 ) Died December 31, 1944, Chicago, Illinois, United States Spouse Albert G. Simms (m. 1932), Joseph M. McCormick (m. 1903) Similar People Albert G Simms, Mark Hanna, Bazy Tankersley, Robert Sanderson McCormick, Robert R McCormick | ||
Succeeded by William H. Dieterich | ||
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Ruth McCormick Simms (née Ruth Hanna; March 27, 1880 – December 31, 1944) was a United States Representative from Illinois and active in the women's suffrage movement.
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Early life and education
Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms was the daughter of Senator Mark Hanna and the wife of Senator Joseph Medill McCormick and later of Congressman Albert Gallatin Simms, hence her maiden name, Ruth Hanna, and name upon death, Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms, are also seen in the literature.
McCormick was born in Cleveland, Ohio where she attended Hathaway Brown School. Later, she attended 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.
In 1903 she married Joseph "Medill" McCormick. They had three children:
Medill served in both the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate prior to his death at age 48 on February 25, 1925. Although not publicized as such at the time, his death was considered a suicide.
Career
Ruth McCormick served as 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. 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 Company 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 and served from March 4, 1929 to March 3, 1931 for the House of Representatives, at-large from Illinois. She was not a candidate for renomination in 1930 since she received the Republican nomination for United States Senator in which election she was unsuccessful. She resumed her newspaper interests. In 1932, she married Albert Gallatin Simms, of New Mexico, who was also a Member of the Seventy-first Congress and resided in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She moved to New Mexico with Simms to a ranch in northern Albuquerque. The property would become Los Poblanos, designed by John Gaw Meem in the Pueblo Revival Style. In 1932, she founded Sandia School, later becoming the Sandia Preparatory School. In 1938, she founded Manzano Day School. Albuquerque Academy’s land was donated by the Simms’ and Albuquerque Little Theatre was also founded by Ruth. She ran a radio station and two newspapers in this period and later purchased a 250,000–acre cattle and sheep ranch in Colorado. She developed pancreatitis following a fall from a horse in 1944, and died in Chicago, Illinois on December 31, 1944. She was buried in Albuquerque, New Mexico.