"Susanna Salter: Voted First Woman Mayor

A Moment in Time

Kansas Historical Society

A monthly series from the Kansas Historical Society

Soon after Kansas women gained the right to vote in municipal elections, voters elected a woman as mayor of Argonia. Susanna Salter was elected the first woman mayor in the United States.

Born in Ohio, Susanna Madora Kinsey moved to a Kansas farm with her parents in 1872. Eight years later, while attending the Kansas State Agricultural College, she met and married Lewis Salter. The couple soon moved to Argonia where she cared for their young children and became an officer in the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Nominated by several Argonia men as a joke, Salter surprised the group and received two-thirds of the votes. She was elected in April 1887, just weeks after Kansas women had gained the right to vote in city elections. The twenty-seven-year-old woman knew more about politics than her detractors realized. She was the daughter of town's first mayor. Her father-in-law, Melville J. Salter, was a former Kansas lieutenant governor.

Although she apparently performed her job well, Salter never sought another elected office. Within a few years, the Salters moved to Oklahoma where the nation's first woman mayor died in 1961 at the age of 101.