Jenckes, Virginia Ellis, 1877-1975

Virginia Ellis Jenckes (November 6, 1877 – January 9, 1975) served three terms as a U.S. Representative (March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1939) from Indiana's Sixth Congressional District. The Terre Haute, Indiana, native was the first woman from Indiana to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Alongside Kathryn O'Loughlin McCarthy, she was the second woman Representative from the Midwest and the first who was not succeeding a male relative.

Born Virginia Ellis Soames in Terre Haute, Indiana, she attended public schools in Terre Haute including Wiley High School, where she enrolled at the age of eleven and became the youngest student in the school’s history. She left high school early to complete her formal education by taking two years of courses at Coates College for Women. In 1912, she married Ray Greene Jenckes, a Terre Haute farmer and grain dealer; together, they managed a 1300-acre farm along the Wabash River in rural Vigo County, Indiana. After her husband's death in 1921, Jenckes inherited the farm along with his grain business and assumed sole responsibility for their management. Owing to frequent river flooding, Jenckes took an active role in flood-control efforts after she and other local farmers organized the Wabash-Maumee Valley Improvement Association, serving as the association's secretary until 1932.

Jenckes's first campaign for a seat in Congress began in 1932, the year after redistricting established Indiana's Sixth Congressional District, which included ten counties along the Wabash River in western Indiana. Prevailing in the Democratic primary and general election, Jenckes quickly distinguished herself in Congress as an advocate for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs and making good on her promise to seek an end to Prohibition. She also emerged as an advocate for American women, veterans and workers. During her later years in Congress, Jenckes became especially concerned about thwarting what she believed to be communist propaganda and its perceived threats, despite the public ridicule she received. She was one of seven Indiana Democrats to lose their seat in the 1938 midterm elections.

Retiring from Congress in early 1939, Jenckes settled in Washington, DC, where she volunteered extensively for the American Red Cross. She helped five priests escape Hungary during the 1956 uprising, setting up a behind-the-scenes network and funneling communist opposition messages to then-Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. Late in life she returned to Indiana, first in Indianapolis before resettling in her native Terre Haute where she would die.