King, Isabella Greenway, 1886-1953

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.

Born Isabella Dinsmore Selmes at the historic Dinsmore Farm in Boone County, Kentucky, she was briefly raised in the Dakota Territory, where her father befriended Theodore Roosevelt, before moving with her mother to New York City after her father's death. She attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, where she met and became lifelong friends with Roosevelt's niece, Eleanor. Weeks after serving as a bridesmaid at the marriage of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Isabella married Robert H. Munro Ferguson, a former member of Theodore Roosevelt’s military unit from the Spanish-American War, with little notice. After Munro Ferguson developed tuberculosis, the family moved in 1909 to a ranch home in the dry climate of the Burro Mountains near Silver City, New Mexico. A year after Munro Ferguson's death, 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.

Isabella Greenway’s political career began during the First World War. In 1918 she chaired the Women’s Land Army of New Mexico. To recognize Greenway’s part in delivering Arizona’s delegation to Franklin Roosevelt at the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, party leaders chose her to second FDR’s nomination. When Arizona’s Representative At-Large, Lewis Williams Douglas, resigned in March 1933 to become director of the Bureau of the Budget, Greenway ran for his seat. On the same day in August that Arizonans voted 3 to 1 to repeal Prohibition, Greenway overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary. In the October 3, 1933, special election, Greenway triumphed with 73 percent of the vote. In November 1934, Greenway won election to a second term, defeating Republican Hoval A. Smith and two third-party candidates with 68 percent of the vote.

Citing the need to spend more time with her family, on March 22, 1936, her fiftieth birthday, Greenway announced her decision to retire from the House. Not only did she wish to leave Washington politics, but despite being considered the front-runner for the Arizona governorship in 1934, she precluded any further public service. Greenway gave tacit confirmation of the break with President Roosevelt by actively campaigning for the 1940 Republican presidential candidate, Wendell L. Willkie, as chair of the Arizona chapter of Democrats for Willkie. In 1939 Greenway married Harry O. King, a former National Recovery Administration manager for the copper industry. She also went on to chair the American Women’s Volunteer Service during World War II, a national group dedicated to providing civil defense training to women. Later, she participated in international cultural exchange programs. Following a long illness, Greenway died in Tucson.