Robertson, Alice, 1854-1931

<p>Alice Mary Robertson (January 2, 1854 – July 1, 1931) was an American educator, social worker, government official, and politician who became the second woman to serve in the United States Congress, and the first from the state of Oklahoma. Robertson was the first woman to defeat an incumbent congressman. She was known for her strong personality, commitment to Native American issues, and anti-feminist stance.</p>

<p>Until the election of Mary Fallin in 2006, Robertson was the only woman elected from Oklahoma to Congress.</p>

<p>Robertson was born at the Tullahassee Mission in Creek Nation, Indian Territory, to missionaries Ann Eliza (née Worcester) and William Schenck Robertson. Her maternal grandfather was Samuel Worcester, a long-time missionary to the Cherokees. The 1860 United States Census shows the family living in Creek Nation, Indian Lands, Arkansas. Her parents translated many works into the Creek language, including the Bible. In early life, Mary Alice Robertson was self-taught under the supervision of her parents. She attended Elmira College, in Elmira, New York.</p>

<p>Alice Mary Robertson, the next woman to follow Jeannette Rankin of Montana into Congress, was her predecessor’s polar opposite. Colorful, quotable, conservative, and hostile to the women’s suffrage movement and its many leaders, Robertson’s single term in the House hinged on her rejection of a significant piece of legislation—a proposed World War I Veterans Bonus Bill.</p>

<p>Alice Mary Robertson was born on January 2, 1854, in the Tullahassee Mission in the Creek Nation Indian Territory, now in Oklahoma. Her parents, William Schenck Robertson and Ann Eliza Worcester Robertson, were missionary schoolteachers. As far back as her maternal grandfather, the Reverend Samuel A. Worcester, her family had been committed to assisting displaced Cherokee and Creek. After attending Elmira College in New York from 1873 to 1874, Robertson took a job as the first female clerk at the Indian Office at the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC. Making a brief stop in Pennsylvania in 1879 to work at the Carlisle Indian School, a boarding school where white instructors often forcibly worked to assimilate Native-American children, Robertson later returned to Oklahoma. In 1885 she founded the Minerva Home—a boarding school to train Native-American girls in domestic skills. This institution later became Henry Kendall College (the present-day University of Tulsa).</p>

<p>Robertson’s missionary work put her within a network of reformers during the early Progressive Era and opened the door to a career in politics. In 1891 she earned the admiration of rising GOP politician Theodore Roosevelt, who later described her as “one of the great women of America.” In 1905 then-President Roosevelt appointed Robertson the postmaster of Muskogee, Oklahoma, where she served until 1913. In addition to her patronage job, Robertson operated a 50-acre dairy farm with an on-site café, which she named “Sawokla,” based on a Native-American word meaning “gathering place.” Both the farm and the café became a social magnet, drawing politicians, former students, journalists, and local folk. During World War I, she endeared herself to many servicemen by distributing food to soldiers in transit through the local train station. In 1916 the GOP nominated her to run for county superintendent of public instruction, but Robertson lost.</p>