King, Isabella Greenway, 1886-1953

<p>Isabella Greenway, a charismatic businesswoman, philanthropist, and politician, served as Arizona’s first woman in Congress. Elected to the House during the depths of the Great Depression, Representative Greenway used her experience and extensive political connections to bring economic relief to her suffering state.</p>

<p>Isabella Selmes was born on March 22, 1886, in Boone County, Kentucky, daughter of Tilden Russell Selmes, a lawyer, general counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and sheep rancher, and Martha Macomb Flandrau Selmes. The family lived briefly in North Dakota, where Tilden Selmes established ranching operations. He also befriended Theodore Roosevelt who, from that day forward, took a special interest in the young Isabella. Eventually, Selmes moved his family to St. Paul, Minnesota. After his death in 1895, Martha Selmes moved to New York City with the adolescent Isabella to enroll her in the elite Miss Chapin’s School, where she made a lifelong friendship with Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor Roosevelt. In March 1905, Isabella Selmes was a bridesmaid at the marriage of Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). Weeks later, 19-year-old Isabella married Robert H. Munro Ferguson, a former member of Theodore Roosevelt’s military unit from the Spanish-American War, with little notice. They raised two children: Martha and Robert. Ferguson, 19 years Isabella’s senior, developed tuberculosis, and the family moved in 1909 to a ranch home in the dry climate of the Burro Mountains near Silver City, New Mexico. Robert Ferguson died in 1922. A year later, Isabella married another former “Rough Rider,” John Campbell Greenway, a decorated veteran of World War I, mining engineer, and copper magnate. The Greenways raised one child, John, and with Isabella’s two other children, settled in the mining town of Ajo, Arizona, which they helped develop alongside their Cornelia surface copper mine. John Greenway died in 1927, and Isabella relocated to Tucson with her children. She established the Arizona Hut, a woodcraft factory that employed wounded veterans. She later built a successful hotel resort, the Arizona Inn, and owned a cattle ranch and Gilpin Airlines, based in Los Angeles, California.</p>

<p>Greenway was a peculiar blend of eastern establishment aristocracy and frontierswoman: cultured and charming, yet rugged and self-reliant. She relished meeting people and was a seemingly inexhaustible campaigner and student of the issues: “I always felt the open door of human contacts was more important than an open book.” Greenway also held firm convictions about the wisdom and resiliency of average Americans and believed political leaders needed to be forthright in discussing national issues. “I believe they are not only anxious to know the truth and will welcome it but that they have the courage to face it, whatever it is.” Western influences, she once observed, gave her something she called a “liberty of living”—a desire and an opportunity to know the wide spectrum of experiences from emotion and aesthetics to intellectual pursuits. “The West is so much less afraid of the things we may have to do and the changes we may have to make in order to save the values in American life that are worth saving,” Greenway remarked, “that sometimes I think this courage of the West to dare new adventures—even if all that are proposed are not all strictly wise adventures—may be our final salvation.</p>

<p>Isabella Dinsmore Selmes Ferguson Greenway King (March 22, 1886 – December 18, 1953) is best known as the first U.S. congresswoman in Arizona history, and as the founder of the Arizona Inn of Tucson. During her life she was also noted as a one-time owner and operator of Los Angeles-based Gilpin Airlines, a speaker at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, and a bridesmaid at the wedding of Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt.</p>

<p>Isabella Dinsmore Selmes was born the daughter of Tilden Russell Selmes (1835–1895) and Martha "Patty" Macomb Flandrau (1861–1923). Isabella was born at the historic Dinsmore Farm in Boone County, Kentucky which was owned by her mother's maternal great aunt Julia Stockton Dinsmore (1833–1926). Tilden Selmes was general counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Patty Flandrau was the daughter of Minnesota judge and politician Charles Eugene Flandrau (1828–1903) and his first wife Isabella Ramsay Dinsmore (1830–1867).</p>

<p>The Selmes family owned a ranch in the Dakota Territory that was close to Theodore Roosevelt's ranch and they developed a close friendship with each other. After the untimely death of her father in 1895, Isabella and her mother lived with various members of her mother's family in Kentucky, Minnesota, and New York. Isabella attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, where she met and became lifelong friends with Roosevelt's niece, Eleanor.</p>