Mary Bellamy


Mary Godat Bellamy was an American teacher, politician, and suffragette who served as the first female member of the Wyoming House of Representatives.

Early life

Mary Godat Bellamy was born on December 13, 1861, in Richwoods, Missouri, to Charles Godat Catherine Horine. Following her father's death her family moved to Galena, Illinois and later to Laramie, Wyoming Territory in 1873. She attended Laramie High School and was a member of its first graduating class.
In 1878, she became a teacher and worked in Tybo, Nevada. In 1886, she married Charles Bellamy and later had three children with him. In 1895, she and her family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Career

Politics

In 1888, she ran for Laramie County Superintendent of Schools and was later elected to that position in 1902. During the 1916 presidential election she served as a Democratic delegate to the state and national conventions.

House of Representatives

During the 1910 elections Bellamy was given the Democratic nomination to run for a seat in the state House of Representatives from Albany County and won alongside four other Democrats. She was the first woman in Wyoming to serve in the Wyoming state legislature and the fifth nationally after four women who had served in the Colorado state legislature.
Following the death of Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan, Bellamy attempted to start a movement to have President William Howard Taft appoint a woman to replace him.
In 1912, she chose to not seek reelection and did not run in the 1914 or 1916 elections. In 1918, she ran for a seat in the state House of Representatives with the Democratic nomination and won. During her tenure she voted in favor of the 18th Amendment which established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States.

Later life

On June 2, 1952, the University of Wyoming gave her an honorary doctor of law degree. On January 28, 1955, she died in Ivinson Memorial Hospital, in Laramie, Wyoming. On January 31, the four female members of the 33rd session of the Wyoming state legislature wrote a memorial for Bellamy that was read by Edness Kimball Wilkins on February 2.