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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—GeorgiaFELTON, Rebecca Latimer
(1835—1930)
Senate Years of Service:
1922-1922
Party:
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.
Bibliography
Dictionary of American Biography
; Felton, Rebecca L. My Memories of Georgia Politics
. Atlanta: Index Printing Co., 1911; Talmadge, John E. Rebecca Latimer Felton: Nine Stormy Decades
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960.
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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