Cecilia Hennel Hendricks

Cecilia Hennel Hendricks (March 2, 1883 – July 15, 1969) was a faculty member at Indiana University Bloomington and a homesteader in Wyoming. She ran for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wyoming in 1926.

Biography Cecilia Hennel was born in Evansville, Indiana, on March 2, 1883, to parents Joseph H. Thuman Hennel and Anna Marie Thuman Hennel. The Hennels moved from Evansville to Bloomington in 1905 so that their daughters Cora, Cecillia, and Edith could attend Indiana University.

Personal life On December 30, 1913, Cecilia married bee farmer John Hendricks and moved to Powell, Wyoming. Their courtship began as an epistolary relationship (pen pals) and their wedding was only the fourth time they had ever seen each other in person. Her detailed letters to her family were published in a 1986 collection entitled Letters from Honeyhill.

Politics In 1926, Hendricks ran as the Democratic candidate for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wyoming. The same year, she campaigned for the re-election of Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman to be sworn in as governor of a U.S. state in 1924. Both Hendricks and Ross lost the elections and Hendricks returned to Indiana in 1931.