Langley, Katherine Gudger, c. 1888-1948

<p>Katherine Emeline Gudger Langley (February 14, 1888 – August 15, 1948) was an American politician. Langley was member of United States House of Representatives from Kentucky during the Seventieth and Seventy-first sessions of Congress. She was the wife of Kentucky politician John W. Langley and daughter of James M. Gudger, Jr., a four-term Congressman from North Carolina. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Kentucky.</p>

<p>Langley was born near Marshall in Madison County, North Carolina on February 14, 1888, to James Madison Gudger and Katherine Hawkins. She graduated in 1901 from the Woman's College, Richmond, Virginia and attended Emerson College of Oratory.</p>

<p>Langley taught at the Virginia Institute at Bristol, TN and worked as a secretary for her father before marrying John Langley and moving to Pikeville, Kentucky in 1905. She had three children: Katherine Langley Bentley, John Jr., and Susanna.</p>

<p>The career of Congresswoman Katherine Gudger Langley illustrates a highly unusual route to Congress. Her husband, John Wesley Langley, resigned his House seat after being convicted of violating Prohibition laws. Katherine Langley then defeated her husband’s successor and won election to the House in a “vindication campaign” designed to exonerate her disgraced spouse.</p>

<p>Katherine Gudger was born near Marshall, North Carolina, on February 14, 1888, to James Madison Gudger and Katherine Hawkins. Gudger graduated in 1901 from the Woman’s College in Richmond, Virginia, and went on briefly to Emerson College of Oratory in Boston. A short teaching job in speech in Tennessee ended when she left for Washington, DC, in 1904 to become her father’s secretary when he was elected U.S. Representative from North Carolina on the Democratic ticket. That same year she met and later married John Langley, a former state legislator and attorney working for the Census Bureau. The couple settled in Pikeville, Kentucky, where John Langley successfully ran as a Republican for the House of Representatives in 1906. He eventually won re-election nine times in a safely Republican district that was an old unionist stronghold in eastern Kentucky.</p>

<p>Katherine Langley was well known in Washington society and on Capitol Hill, working as her husband’s secretary and administrative assistant. From 1919 to 1925 she was clerk to the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds while John Langley was chairman. At the same time, Katherine Langley also was an active member in party politics, serving as the first woman member of the state central committee and founder of the Women’s Republican State Committee. She served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1924.</p>