Pratt, Ruth Sears Baker, 1877-1965

Ruth Baker Pratt (August 24, 1877 – August 23, 1965) was an American philanthropist and politician. A member of the Republican Party, she was the first female representative to be elected from New York.

Born Ruth Sears Baker in Ware, Massachusetts, she attended Dana Hall and studied mathematics at Wellesley College. She also spent a year and a half studying violin at the Conservatory of Liège, Belgium. In 1903, she married John Teele Pratt, a corporate attorney, philanthropist, music impresario, and financier, and moved with him to New York City's Upper East Side.

Pratt's involvement in politics began during World War I, when she worked with the Woman’s Liberty Loan Committee. She served on the mayor’s wartime food commission and met Herbert Hoover, then head of the National Food Administration. Pratt initially balked at the notion of elective office, choosing instead to focus on the upbringing of her five children. In January 1924, she was chosen as the associate GOP leader of New York’s Upper East Side Assembly district—providing her a powerful political base for the next decade. When she overcame her reluctance to enter the political limelight and campaigned for city alderman against Democrat James O’Gorman, the race received national attention because no woman in New York City history had ever served on the city’s governing body. With a heavily Republican constituency, Pratt won by a wide majority on November 4, 1925. In 1928, after winning reelection by an even larger margin, she introduced measures to authorize construction of the Triborough Bridge and tunnels under the East River.

Pratt entered the race for an open U.S. House seat in September 1928, comfortably winning the primary and narrowly winning the general election. During her first term, she received assignments on the Banking and Currency Committee, the first for a woman and a nod to her work on New York City’s budget and the Library Committee. She favored an increase in benefits for permanently disabled World War I veterans and introduced a bill for a $75,000 annual appropriation to acquire and publish books for blind readers. In the 72nd Congress, with little fanfare, Pratt was assigned to the Education Committee and left Banking and Currency. She remained a fiscal conservative, however, refusing to countenance federally backed programs to alleviate the nation’s economic woes. An ardent defender of President Herbert Hoover, she was one of 111 Republicans who lost their House seats in the 1932 Democratic rout.

After Congress, Ruth Pratt served as chair of the Fine Arts Foundation, a forerunner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was appointed to the Republican Builders, a group formed to renew the party after the defeats of 1932 and 1934. She continued to live in New York City and was president of the Women’s National Republican Club from 1943 to 1946. On August 23, 1965, a day before her eighty-eighth birthday, Pratt died in Glen Cove, New York.