Biographies - Minnie J. Grinstead

-- - December 24, 1925

During the first half century of statehood, the franchise was extended to Kansas women in increments. Many women served faithfully and effectively in elective and appointive public offices. They also worked tirelessly for equality and achieved equal suffrage in 1912. Six years later the salons of the Kansas legislature had to make some adjustments, when Seward County voters elected Minnie Tamar Johnson Grinstead, the state's first female legislators.

Grinstead, a forty-nine year old Republican, was born in Crawford County, graduated from the State Normal at Emporia, taught school for a dozen years, lectured for the WCTU, and was married to Judge Virgil H. Grinstead. She was elected to the state House of Representatives in November 1918 and reelected in 1920 and 1922. At first the men of the House were skeptical, to say the least. "They believed," reported the Kansas City Star (November 17, 1920), "that Mrs. Grinstead would be a 'fussy' member, and that she would scold and find fault, and 'nag' them for smoking cigars. They had visions of having to speak in whispers when they wished to express their thoughts in the plain Kansas language."

Although Representative Grinstead did oppose tobacco use and introduced a bill to strengthen the state's anti-smoking statute, she impressed those with whom she served, and in 1921 three additional women joined her in the Kansas House of Representatives. The new women would, again according to the Star, "give her [Grinstead] support in her demands about the housekeeping side of lawmaking." The others were: Minnie J. Minnich, Sumner County, Republican; Miss Nellie Cline, a lawyer and Democrat, Pawnee County; and Ida M. Walker, Norton County, Republican, associate editor of Norton's Real Westerner.

Grinstead chose not to seek a forth term in 1924. Instead she sought and was elected probate judge in her hometown of Liberal, the position she held at the time of her death, December 24, 1925.