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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—Georgia FELTON, Rebecca Latimer(1835—1930)Senate Years of Service: 1922-1922Party: Democrat FELTON, Rebecca Latimer, (wife of William Harrell Felton), a Senator from Georgia; born near Decatur, De Kalb County, Ga., June 10, 1835; attended the common schools and graduated from the Madison Female College in 1852; moved to Bartow County, Ga., in 1854; taught school; writer, lecturer, and reformer with special interest in agricultural and women’s issues; served as secretary to her husband while he was a Member of Congress 1875-1881; appointed by the Governor as a Democrat to the United States Senate on October 3, 1922, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Thomas E. Watson; served just twenty-four hours, from November 21 to 22, 1922, a successor having been elected; was not a candidate for election to fill the vacancy; the first woman to occupy a seat in the United States Senate; the Senator who, having served one day, served the shortest term; and the oldest Senator, at age eighty-seven, at the time of first swearing-in; engaged as a writer and lecturer and resided in Cartersville, Ga., until her death in Atlanta, Ga., January 24, 1930; interment in Oak Hill Cemetery, Cartersville, Ga. Chamberlin, Hope. “Benefit of the Doubt,” A Minority of Members: Women in the U.S. Congress , 19-37. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973. Felton, Rebecca Latimer. Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth . 1919. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1980. ___. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics . Atlanta: Index Printing Co., 1911 (memoirs of William H. Felton, written by Rebecca Felton). Floyd, Josephine Bone. “Rebecca Latimer Felton, Champion of Women’s Rights.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 30 (June 1946): 81-104. ___. “Rebecca Latimer Felton, Political Independent.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 30 (March 1946): 14-34. Hirsch, Eleanor G. “Grandma Felton and the U.S. Senate.” Mankind: The Magazine of Popular History 4 (1974): 52-57. Hunter, Joan Conerly. “Rebecca Latimer Felton.” Master’s thesis, University of Georgia, 1944. Mellichamp, Josephine. “Rebecca Latimer Felton.” In Senators from Georgia , pp. 224-29. Huntsville, AL: Strode Publishers, 1976. Talmadge, John E. “Rebecca Latimer Felton.” In Georgians in Profile: Historical Essays in Honor of Ellis Merton Coulter , edited by Horace Montgomery, pp. 277-302. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1958. ___. Rebecca Latimer Felton: Nine Stormy Decades . Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960. ___. “Rebecca Latimer Felton, Georgian.” Georgia Review 9 (Spring 1955): 65-73. ___. “The Seating of the First Woman in the United States Senate.” Georgia Review 10 (Summer 1956): 168-74. Whites, LeeAnn. “Rebecca Latimer Felton and the Wife’s Farm: The Class and Racial Politics of Gender Reform.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 76 (Summer 1992): 354-72. Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present |
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