Cecil M. Harden

Cecil Murray Harden (November 21, 1894 – December 5, 1984) was an American educator who became a Republican politician and an advocate of women's rights. She served five terms in the U.S. Representative (January 3, 1949 to January 3, 1959) representing Indiana's 6th congressional district. Harden was the only Republican woman elected to represent Indiana in the U.S. Congress until 2012.

Early life and education Cecil Murray was born on November 21, 1894, at Covington in Fountain County, Indiana, to Jennie (Clotfelter) and Timothy J. Murray. Cecil's father was a real estate broker and a longtime leader of the local Democratic Party.

She attended local public schools and graduated from Covington High School in 1912. Murray enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, but left IU to become a teacher in the Troy township schools, at later in her hometown of Covington.

In her first term in Congress in 1949, Harden was initially assigned to the Veterans' Affairs Committee, but the next term she transferred to the House Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments (later called Government Operations). During the 83rd Congress, Harden chaired the Inter-Governmental Relations subcommittee of Government Operations. She also served six years (1953–59) on the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service. While serving on these congressional committees, Harden toured military installations to evaluate and looking for ways to improve the military's procurement procedures. In an effort to cut government costs under the Eisenhower administration, she also urged military and other government offices to consider using private companies to perform some of their work. Harden was one of Indiana's seven Republican congressional members who were defeated in the 1958 election (and one of the forty-seven seats in the U.S. House that the Republicans lost in the election). Her defeat was blamed, in part, on a recession that negatively affected industrial employment in Terre Haute.

Death and burial Cecil Harden died of cancer on December 5, 1984, at the age of ninety, in Lafayette, Indiana.