Mary Godat Bellamy, Wyoming’s First Woman Legislator
Mary Godat Bellamy (1861-1955) was the first woman to serve in the Wyoming State Legislature. A Democrat from Albany County, Bellamy used her time in the legislature to promote a variety of progressive causes, including prison reform, education and women’s rights. Outside of her legislative work, Bellamy was active in the suffrage and women’s club movements. Bellamy’s career exemplifies the agendas and methods of Western women politicians in the early 1900s, and she laid the groundwork for future generations of women in politics.
Early Life
Mary Bellamy (née Godat) was born on Friday, Dec. 13, 1861, in Richwoods, Missouri, the last of seven children. Bellamy’s father, who was French, passed away shortly after her birth. Her family was well-off; her maternal grandfather was the largest landowner in the neighborhood.
Since she was born during the Civil War, Bellamy’s earliest years were unstable—some of her earliest memories were of Confederate troops passing through her family’s land, with the Union army soon following in pursuit. Though her uncles were away fighting for the Union, the women in the family stayed in Missouri until Bellamy’s grandmother died. Bellamy and her mother then moved to Galena, Illinois, to live with one of Bellamy’s sisters. There, she was able to attend school for the first time. But this was soon disrupted. Another of Bellamy’s sisters, Alice Murphy, had moved with her husband to Laramie, Wyoming. She died young, leaving behind a 2-year-old son. So, in 1873, Mary’s mother—with 12-year-old Mary in tow—moved to Laramie to care for the orphaned child.
Bellamy spent the rest of her childhood in Laramie. The town was new, having just been founded in 1868. Nevertheless, it was a lively place to grow up. Years later, Bellamy described a cheerful adolescence full of Friday night dances, Sunday schools, sociables and surprise parties. She was part of the first graduating class from Laramie High School, which had been founded specifically to accommodate her and two other female students.
Growing up in Laramie, Bellamy was surrounded by the first generation of American women who were fully politically enfranchised. Wyoming Territory had granted women suffrage in December of 1869, and Laramie’s women were among the most politically active in the territory. They had been voting since 1870 and had served on juries in 1871 and 1872. In 1870, one of Laramie’s earliest teachers, Eliza Stewart Boyd, unsuccessfully ran for the office of County Superintendent of Schools. One of Bellamy’s babysitters was Justice Esther Morris, the first woman in U.S. history to serve as a judge. Thus, unlike most American women of her generation, Bellamy had the unusual experience of growing up in a community of enfranchised and politically active women.
Entry Into Politics
Bellamy came from a family of teachers, and she followed them in to the profession. She first taught in Nevada while staying with another of her sisters. She returned to Wyoming in 1876, where she taught on ranches and in Laramie. She married surveyor Charles Bellamy in 1886. Her oldest son, Benjamin, was born in 1887, and she gave birth to twins Freeman and Fulton in 1895. Unlike most women of her era, Bellamy continued to work in her profession even after her marriage.
She first entered politics in 1902, when she was elected County Superintendent of Schools for Albany County. During her tenure, she conducted teacher institutes and focused on introducing libraries to rural schools. She also worked to standardize curricula across the county.
Her career as an educator gave her an entry into politics, but it was her work in the women’s club movement that gave her the political network and experience necessary for election to higher office. Bellamy helped to found Woman’s Clubs in Laramie and Cheyenne and served as the president of both. She was often a delegate to the state and national Club Federations. Through this work, Bellamy came to know many of the state’s most politically active women and was deeply involved in many progressive causes. For example, beginning in 1906 Bellamy led the Woman’s Club drive to establish a home for elderly women. In an era when economic opportunities for women were limited, many widowed women found themselves living in precarious situations. The women’s home provided a solution.
Her club work also trained her in the fine points of lawmaking. While serving on the legislative committee of the Laramie Woman’s Club, Bellamy undertook a study of property laws pertaining to women in the state of Wyoming. She proposed several reforms, which she and her fellow club members shepherded through the legislature.
Campaigning
In 1910, with these experiences under her belt, Bellamy decided to run for a seat in Wyoming’s House of Representatives. The Laramie Daily Boomerang described her as a “democratic-progressive republican.” Bellamy was a Democrat, but the progressive and populist movements had a strong influence on Wyoming politics. This was an era of party realignment. Third party candidates were common, and the major parties had both traditional and progressive wings. Wyoming’s women were generally progressive in their politics, and the Democratic Party hoped to pull in these voters by putting forth a woman candidate. The Laramie Daily Boomerang noted that “Mrs. Bellamy is a fluent public speaker and her campaign is attracting unprecedented interest among Wyoming women who hope to elect her as an incentive to greater efforts on the part of feminine voters.” Bellamy’s campaign platform emphasized a typical progressive agenda: the use of government to build public institutions and pass laws that would address social problems.
A Woman in the Legislature
Bellamy won her race and served in the 1911–1913 legislative session. The presence of a woman in the legislature required male legislators to adjust. Once the session began, the men passed a resolution that they would not smoke on the floor. Bellamy felt bad that they had done this on her part, and in any case, she said, they “could not keep to it.” She told them to go ahead and smoke. When the men were passing cigars around the legislature to celebrate the passage of a measure, they would pass her gum. To be polite, Bellamy took the gum and chewed it—but she felt “ashamed” when she thought of what her mother would think of her, a lady chewing gum in public.
At the end of the session, Bellamy’s colleagues presented her with a bouquet with $20 worth of flowers. Overall, Bellamy reported that she experienced no resentment from the men, and indeed “they were awful nice.” But that did not mean that they paid her any special deference in terms of policy. She noted that, “They were as kind, but not giving away political faith because I was a woman.”
Bellamy was an effective legislator, pushing forward a platform typical of Western women politicians of her era. Bellamy took an active role in Democratic caucus discussions, but she pursued her own agenda. Indeed, representatives were not expected to take the party line on every issue. Bellamy stated that, “On many occasions, most in fact, no party policy was given. I had to be alert and have my mind decided on every question as I could not be guided by the vote of others.” As a member of the committees on Education and Libraries, and on Buildings and Institutions, much of her time in the legislature was focused on establishing, reforming and funding state-run institutions.
One of her core issues was prison reform, a cause on which Wyoming’s female activists had long been engaged. She supported the abolition of the lessee system, which allowed contractors to purchase the labor of prisoners, while the prisoners themselves were paid little or nothing for their work. Progressives nationwide abhorred this system; Theodore Roosevelt wrote that the contractor who leased prison labor “is in effect the master and the prisoner his slave.”
Bellamy’s bill replaced the lessee system with a program that allowed convicts to work on road building and other projects, but to be paid for their work. Further, her bill provided that a percentage of any wages prisoners earned were distributed to the prisoner’s dependents. She noted that, “Our prison is now one of most sanitary and well-regulated in the country.”
During her campaign, Bellamy had promised to establish a “reformatory for boys” if elected. She followed through on this by authoring a bill to create an industrial school for the education and reform of “young criminals,” noting that “85% of men in penitentiary were under 21 years of age.” Her legislation led to the creation of the Wyoming Industrial Institute in Worland, which is still in operation today. Bellamy also supported a measure to transport women criminals to states with prison facilities specifically dedicated to women. Wyoming's prison system did not have any special provisions or quarters for women, which sometimes exposed women to physical or sexual violence. She also successfully sponsored an appropriation to employ a State Humane Officer “for child and animal protection.”
A supporter of temperance, Bellamy said, “I thought I showed my smartness” to defeat the pro-liquor lobby. At the time, saloons were illegal in unincorporated towns; these areas did not have law enforcement. A new town had been created near Sheridan, and a man who wanted to start a brewery in that community came to the legislature to lobby for the repeal of the law.
Bellamy “fought tooth and nail” to defeat the repeal. When the measure came up, Bellamy noticed many of the male members of the House slinking out of the chamber—they did not want to be seen publicly supporting a pro-liquor measure, for fear of alienating temperance voters. When the House was “getting pretty slim,” she knew this meant the men “did not want to vote on it,” and made a motion for a call of the House. For about an hour, the officers of the house attempted to round up the members, but several were missing. One was asleep; another, drunk. In their absence, the House voted, and Bellamy defeated the bill by about three votes. “Pretty good,” she commented.
As the representative for Albany County, Bellamy played a key role in securing funding for the University of Wyoming. Indeed, she “made this bill my stake. Colleagues would say, ‘Mrs. Bellamy, what do you want?’ and I’d say ½ mill tax for University.” An initial effort to secure a regular annual appropriation for the University was defeated early in the session, but Bellamy used her position on the education committee to bring it back to the table. She got the university president and trustees to testify before the committee, and she spoke from the floor on the subject for half an hour, while the public watched from the “crowded galleries” of the House. Her success with this bill was due to her considerable political horse-trading skills. Her colleagues from Fremont County were initially opposed to the annual appropriation, and hoped to secure funding for an agricultural college in Lander. Simultaneously, a movement was building to divide Wyoming counties up into smaller units. Bellamy agreed to oppose the division of Fremont County in exchange for their support of the University’s annual appropriation, and the location of the agricultural college in Laramie. She succeeded, and noted that this move put “the Univ. on same standing as the other state institutions and [got] it out of politics.” Her bill helped to solidify the development of the university. It allowed for the building of an agricultural hall, and provided funds for many other departments.
Another progressive issue that Bellamy supported was pure food and drug laws. Under her leadership, existing laws were rewritten to prevent the dumping of poor-quality food in the state. Bellamy noted that Wyoming women were among the first in the nation to take up the pure food cause.
Not all her bills were successful, particularly her bills addressing issues specific to women and children. Her bill to allow women to be appointed administrators of wills was passed in the House but was killed in the Senate. She also sponsored a measure to make parents responsible for their children’s criminal behavior, but this also did not pass. Bellamy proposed an eight-hour workday for women and children working in factories and laundries. The bill passed, but the governor did not sign it. The bill did return and pass in a subsequent session, however.
Bellamy and the National Women’s Rights Movement
During and after her term in the legislature, Bellamy was devoted to the national women’s rights movement. In 1912, she was a strategist and public speaker for the successful referendum that enfranchised Oregon’s women. In 1914, she became the Vice President of the National Council of Women Voters and attended its annual conference in San Francisco. Under her leadership, the next conference was held in Cheyenne. The goal of this organization was to coordinate the efforts of enfranchised women in support of the 19th Amendment, as well as other women’s issues.
When World War I broke out, Bellamy immediately became involved in Red Cross work. She served as county chair for the Liberty Loans committee, coordinating fundraising efforts in Laramie and across the state. Eventually, she also helped to establish Wyoming’s American Legion.
The efforts of organized women and support of the war were also intended to demonstrate to the American public that women should be enfranchised via Constitutional amendment. In December 1917, Bellamy traveled to Washington, D.C. to represent Wyoming in the final—and successful—drive to push this amendment through Congress. As the delegate from the first suffrage state, Bellamy was given a prominent place in all the meetings. She frequently spoke on the impact and success of women’s rights in Wyoming.
Bellamy continued to be active in women’s and reform movements throughout her life. In 1952, the University of Wyoming granted her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. She died in Laramie in 1955 after a lifetime of public service. Her daughter-in-law described her: “A truly great humanitarian, unselfish in every way, for her time, effort, and money were spent not for her personal aggrandizement and pleasure, but in effort to bring others a greater measure of joy and completeness of living.” In many ways, Bellamy epitomizes the progressive reformer of the era. Her faith in the power of the law and government to promote solutions to social problems, along with her belief that women should be part of the political conversation, had a lasting impact on the development of Wyoming and the nation.
Resources
- Photographs courtesy of the Wyoming State Archives, Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources
Primary Sources
- Bellamy, Mary to Grace Raymond Hebard, n.d. Box 30, Folder 19, Mary Godat Bellamy Folder, Grace Raymond Hebard Collection, Acc. #400008, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. (Hereafter AHC).
- Bellamy, Mrs. Fulton. Biographical Manuscript. 1940. Mary Godat Bellamy Bio File, AHC .
- Laramie Daily Boomerang. “Woman Member of Legislature.” Nov. 02, 1910, 1. Wyoming Digital Newspaper Project. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://wyomingnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=WYLDB19101102-02.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA--------0------
- “Mrs. Mary Bellamy, Laramie Wyoming,” Oral History Interview, Jan. 19, 1948, Wyoming Pioneers Oral History Project, Collection 300018, AHC.
- Northern Wyoming Herald and Garland Irrigation Era. “Prison Contract Labor.” May 17, 1912, 2. Accessed April 9, 2024. https://www.newspapers.com/image/898207529/
Secondary Sources
- Spring, Agnes Wright. Near the Greats. Frederick, Colorado; Platte N’ Press, 1981, 16.