Alice Mary ROBERTSON, Congress, OK (1854-1931)

1854-1931

ROBERTSON, Alice Mary, a Representative from Oklahoma; born at Tullahassee Mission, Creek Nation, Indian Territory (now Tullahassee, Okla.), January 2, 1854; self-taught in early life under the supervision of missionary parents; attended Elmira College, Elmira, N.Y.; clerk in the Indian Office, Washington, D.C., 1873-1879; returned to Indian Territory and taught in the school at Tullahassee and later in the Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pa., 1880-1882; again returned to Indian Territory and established Nuyaka Mission; engaged in teaching at Okmulgee, Okla., and had charge of a boarding school for Indian girls, which developed into Henry Kendall College (now the University of Tulsa); Government supervisor of Creek Indian schools 1900-1905; postmaster of Muskogee, Okla., 1905-1913; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1921-March 3, 1923); was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 to the Sixty-eighth Congress; appointed by President Harding a welfare worker at Veterans’ Hospital No. 90 at Muskogee in May 1923; died in Muskogee, Okla., on July 1, 1931; interment in Greenhill Cemetery.

Bibliography

James, Louise B. “Alice Mary Robertson-Anti-Feminist Congresswoman.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 55 (Winter 1977-1978): 454-62; Stanley, Ruth M. “Alice M. Robertson, Oklahoma’s First Congresswoman.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 45 (Autumn 1967): 259-89.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present