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A Prank Led to America’s First Nominated Female to Office, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2019 33 min

38. America’s First Female Mayor

Susanna Salter and her husband. Pinterest

Susanna M. Salter was born in 1860 into an Ohio Quaker family, which moved to Kansas when she was twelve. At age twenty, she attended the predecessor of today’s Kansas State University, but was forced to quit mere weeks before graduation, due to ill health. While pursuing her higher education, she met her future husband, and after getting married in 1880, the couple moved to Argonia and started a family, with Susanna eventually giving birth to nine children.

In Argonia, Susanna became active in her local Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) – an anti-alcohol organization advocating Prohibition. When women got the right to vote in Kansas municipal elections in 1887, the WCTU made enforcement of the state’s Prohibition law its main issue, and backed a slate of like-minded (male) candidates. However, their efforts to get women to exercise their newly won voting rights displeased some men.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.