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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—MaineMargaret Chase SMITH
(1897-1995)
Senate Years of Service:
1949-1973Party: RepublicanSMITH, Margaret Chase,
(wife of Clyde Harold Smith), a Representative and a Senator from
Maine; born Margaret Madeline Chase, December 14, 1897, in
Skowhegan, Somerset County, Maine; attended the public schools;
taught school in Skowhegan, Maine 1916-1917; business executive for
country weekly newspaper and a woolen company 1919-1930; secretary
to husband while he was in Congress 1937-1940; lieutenant colonel,
Air Force Reserve 1950-1958; elected as a Republican to the
Seventy-sixth Congress, by special election, June 3, 1940, to fill
the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, Clyde H. Smith;
reelected to the four succeeding Congresses and served from June 3,
1940, to January 3, 1949; was not a candidate for reelection but
was elected in 1948 to the United States Senate; reelected in 1954,
1960 and 1966 and served January 3, 1949, until January 3, 1973;
unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1972; chairwoman, Special
Committee on Rates of Compensation (Eighty-third Congress),
Republican Conference (Ninetieth through Ninety-second Congresses),
ranking Republican member on Armed Services Committee (Ninetieth
through Ninety-second Congresses), ranking Republican member on
Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee (Eighty-eighth through
Ninety-first Congresses); first woman to be placed in nomination
for the presidency at a major party convention 1964; visiting
professor for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
1973-1976; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on July 6,
1989; was a resident of Skowhegan, Maine, until her death on May
29, 1995; remains were cremated, and ashes placed in the
residential wing of the Margaret Chase Smith Library, Skowhegan,
Maine.
Bibliography
American National Biography; Scribner Encyclopedia of
American Lives; Smith, Margaret Chase. Declaration of
Conscience. New York: Doubleday, 1972; Sherman, Janann. No
Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000; Hutchison, Kay Bailey.
“Margaret Chase Smith.” In American Heroines: The
Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country. New York: HaperCollins,
2004: 210-243.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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