Edna Bertha (Rankin) McKinnon, 1893-1978

Edna Bertha Rankin, birth control advocate, was born in Missoula, Montana, on October 21, 1893, the youngest of the seven children of John and Olive (Pickering) Rankin. For biographical data concerning the Rankin children, see the Inventory for the Jeannette Rankin Papers, Schlesinger Library. Her oldest sister, Jeannette Rankin, was in 1916 the first woman elected to the United States Congress. Both Jeannette and their brother Wellington, a major Montana landowner and Republican politician, were influential in shaping Edna's educational and career choices. She entered Wellesley College in 1912, left for the University of Wisconsin in 1914, and two years later left again to work on her sister's Congressional campaign in Montana. In 1916 she received her B.A. from the University of Montana and her LL.B. in 1918. She practiced law briefly in Helena, Montana, before her marriage to John Wallace McKinnon, Jr., in 1919.

The McKinnons had two children, Dorothy Pickering, born in 1920 (later Dorothy McKinnon "Mackey" Brown) and John Wallace McKinnon III, 1923-1930. The marriage lasted eleven years; ERM frequently told others that she had "lost her husband during the Depression."

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