Isabella Greenway
Isabella Dinsmore Greenway (née Selmes; born March 22, 1886 – December 18, 1953) was an American politician who was the first congresswoman in Arizona history, and the founder of the Arizona Inn of Tucson. During her life she was also noted as a one-time owner and operator of Los Angeles-based Gilpin Airlines, a speaker at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, and a bridesmaid at the wedding of Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt.[1]
Isabella Greenway
December 18, 1953 (aged 67)
Tucson, Arizona, U.S.
Dinsmore homestead in Kentucky
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Robert Munro-Ferguson(m. 1905; died 1922)
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Harry O. King(m. 1939)
Early life[edit]
Isabella Dinsmore Selmes was born the daughter of Tilden Russell Selmes (1835–1895) and Martha "Patty" Macomb Flandrau (1861–1923). Isabella was born at the historic Dinsmore Farm in Boone County, Kentucky which was owned by her mother's maternal great aunt Julia Stockton Dinsmore (1833–1926). Her father Tilden Selmes was a Yale-educated attorney who originally practiced in St. Paul where he met her mother. Her mother Martha "Patty" Flandrau was the daughter of Minnesota Supreme Court judge and politician Charles Eugene Flandrau (1828–1903) and his first wife Isabella Ramsay Dinsmore (1830–1867).[2]
The Selmes family owned a ranch 15 miles west of Mandan in Dakota Territory and was on the same rail line as Theodore Roosevelt's ranches in Medora 150 west of town. Her father Tilden and Theodore met in St. Paul while both were waiting their west-bound train. The Selmes family hosted him multiple times at their ranch and developed a close friendship with each other.[3] The ranch was lost in blizzards in 1886-87, and Tilden, Patty and little Isabella moved to St. Paul[4] to be near Patty's family. Tilden continued to practice law, and was for a time an associate counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad.
After the untimely death of her father in 1895, Isabella and her mother lived with various members of her mother's family in Kentucky, Minnesota, and New York. Patty supported them by selling bacon and ham and working as a chaperone.[1][4] In 1901, Patty's sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and Franklin Cutcheon, invited Patty and Isabella to join them in New York City.[4] Isabella attended Miss Chapin's School and Miss Spence's School in New York City,[3] where she met and became lifelong friends with Roosevelt's niece, Eleanor.[5] Isabella finished school in 1904, but did not graduate.[1]
As Patty had a drinking problem, and with a smaller inheritance from Flandrau than expected, Isabella's debut was seen by the family as a way to not only secure her future but also "keep her mother from succumbing to drink and despair."[1] Isabella was successful in society. She became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt's cousin, Corinne Robinsion, who would read a Jack London book to Isabella as they drove to balls to make sure they remembered the world's problems.[1]
Activism and politics[edit]
Early work[edit]
Her political work began in 1912, when Isabella worked to get voters for Roosevelt's Bull Moose ticket.[15] Ferguson told her to campaign and register voters in "the most shameless manner."[16]
During the First World War she developed and directed the New Mexico Women's Land Army, a network of southwest women who farmed while the men were overseas.[15] She also served on the local National Defense Council.[8]
After the war, Isabella Ferguson joined the Grant County Board of Education. She temporarily closed the schools to incentivize citizens into paying their school taxes.[8]
In 1927, Greenway opened Arizona Hut, a furniture factory employing disabled veterans and their immediate families.[17][16] She also lobbied for a dam in the Colorado River.[15]
Before John Greenway's death, he had been on the start of a career in government. He had been asked to run for governor and received a nomination for vice president at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. Greenway met industrialists and veterans' groups through John. These groups later supported her political career.[16]
Later life[edit]
While working as a congresswoman, Greenway met Harry O. King (1890–1976), a National Recovery Administration manager for the copper industry. After her retirement, King divorced his wife of twenty-two years and began courting Greenway. They married in 1939.[12] By then, King was president of the Institute of Applied Economics in New York City. During their marriage, Isabella spent part of her time in New York City and part in Tucson.
[20]
In 1940, Greenway refused to support Roosevelt for another term, as she believed there should be a limit of two presidential terms.[4] She worked with the Democrats supporting Wendell Willkie.[8] In response to her disloyalty, Roosevelt invited Greenway's children, without their mother, to dinner at the White House.[4] However, Greenway remained close with Eleanor.[21]
Although Greenway had opposed the United States entering the war in Europe, after Pearl Harbor, she joined the war effort. She was elected to chair the American Women's Voluntary Services and the Arizona Inn was deemed essential to the war efforts in order to provide accommodations near the local air base and naval training schools.[4]
Death and legacy[edit]
Greenway died in 1953 in Tucson at the Arizona Inn of heart failure.[8][22] She is buried on the Dinsmore Homestead in Kentucky where she had been born.
In Phoenix, Greenway Road and several public schools are named for her second husband, John Campbell Greenway.[23]
In 1981, Greenway was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame as a member of the inaugural cohort.