Ruth Bryan Owen

Ruth Bryan Owen ( born October 2, 1885 in Jacksonville, Morgan County, Illinois; † July 26, 1954 in Copenhagen, Denmark) was an American politician. Between 1929 and 1933, she represented the state of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

Ruth Bryan Owen was the daughter of William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), who was the late 19th and early 20th century, a leading politician of the Democratic Party. He ran three times unsuccessfully for the presidency, was from 1913 to 1915 Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United States and previously congressman for the state of Nebraska. The daughter attended the public schools in Lincoln and then the Monticello Seminary in Godfrey. Later she studied at the University of Nebraska. In 1903, she broke off her studies to get married William Homer Leavitt, a portrait painter from Rhode Iceland. Until the divorce in 1909, the couple had two children. In 1910 she married the British Army officer Reginald Owen ( † 1928). The couple also had two children.

During the First World War Ruth Owen 1915-1918 nurse was in Egypt and Palestine. Between 1925 and 1928 she served as a board member of the University of Miami in Florida. Politically, it was like her father, a member of the Democratic Party. In the congressional elections of 1928, she was in the fourth electoral district of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where they became the successor of William J. Sears on March 4, 1929. After a re-election in 1930, she could pass in Congress until March 3, 1933 two legislative sessions. These were shaped by the events of the Great Depression. In the House, Owen became a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee as the first woman.

In 1932, she was not nominated by their party for re-election. After the assumption of office of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt Ruth Owen became the first woman ever U.S. ambassador. In this capacity, she was sent in place of Frederick Coleman to Denmark, where she represented her country 1933-1936 at the local government. This year, she married Borge Rohde, a captain of the royal guard. In 1945, she was delegate to the founding meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. In 1948 she was deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN. Between 1938 and 1954 she was a member of the advisory committee for the reform of labor law for women in public service. Ruth Owen died on 26 July 1954 in Copenhagen.