Ransome, Amy Cordoba Rock, 1872-1942

Amy Cordoba Rock Ransome (1872-1942) was a well-known suffragist and leader in the National Woman's Party who spent much of her life promoting equal rights for women. Ransome was born in Cordoba, Argentina (the inspiration for her middle name) where her father, Miles Rock, was working at the newly-established Argentine National Observatory. She spent most of her childhood in Washington, D.C. where her parents were well established members of that city's scientific community. They encouraged their two children, ACR (as she was known to family and friends) and her brother Alfred Mayer Rock, to pursue educational opportunities and political activism. ACR attended Bryn Mawr (BA '93), the University of Heidelberg (Chemistry MA '96), and the University of Berlin ('96-7, Ph.D. studies in Chemistry cut short by international friction with Germany over the Spanish-American War). When Ransome returned to Washington, she left her chemistry career behind and shifted her studies to geology. While working as an assistant at the USGS in D.C., she met her future husband, Frederick Leslie Ransome (FLR to family and friends), whom she married in 1899. FLR was a well-known American geologist who helped found the journal Economic Geology in 1905 and was associate editor of the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences . Together, they had four children, Janet, Susan, Violet, and Alfred. Both before and after her marriage, Ransome was actively involved in politics and lobbying for progressive women's causes. When she married, she left civil service to raise her family, but she continued her political activities.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as FLR's teaching career took them to Princeton, Tucson and Pasadena, the Ransomes kept their Washington residence. The house in D.C. allowed FLR to continue working as a consultant for the USGS and to participate in the national scientific community. It also gave Ransome a base from which she could further her political work. Ransome maintained the house in Washington after FLR died in 1935 and regularly traveled between California and D.C. to continue her lobbying activities.

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