Kate Barnard

Catherine Ann "Kate" Barnard (May 23, 1875 – February 23, 1930) was the first woman to be elected as a state official in Oklahoma, and the eleventh woman to be elected to a statewide public office in the United States, in 1907. All ten prior elected women were elected to Superintendent of Public Instruction in four states (ND: Emma Bates and Laura Eisenhuth; ID: Mae Scott, Permeal French and Belle Chamberlain; CO; Katherine Craig, Helen Grenfell, Grace Patton, Angenette Peavey; WY: Estelle Reel). She served as the first Oklahoma Commissioner of Charities and Corrections for two four-year terms, the only position that the 1907 Oklahoma Constitution permitted a woman to hold.

Before being elected to office, Barnard had worked as a teacher and in clerical patronage positions in the territorial government. Her mother died when she was two and the family was living in Kansas. She lived alone on the claim for two years while he lived and worked in Oklahoma City. She moved to Oklahoma City in 1895, attended St. Joseph's Academy (a Catholic school), obtained a teaching certificate, and taught until 1902.

Charity work After she quit teaching, Barnard took a business course, then became a secretary for the territorial legislature in Oklahoma City. In 1904, she was selected from among 500 applicants to be a "territorial hostess" at the St. Louis World's Fair. While in St. Louis, she met Jane Addams and others who were active in social reform movements. She also was exposed to big-city slum life, crime and other related social ills. From then on, she became a reformer. Her work and the pressure she put on Oklahoma's first Governor, Charles N. Haskell, resulted in the return of the prisoners to Oklahoma and the construction of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma.

End of political career Her political career ended during her second term in office, after she began to advocate on behalf of Indian wards who were being cheated out of their land as a result of grafting. During this time, her office produced the first official governmental investigative report of the Osage Indian murders. Her work on behalf of Indian children raised the ire of William H. Murray and other prominent Oklahoma businessmen and officials who convinced the state legislature to defund her office. Wilma Mankiller's 1993 book, Mankiller, A Chief and Her People, on page 173 quotes Barnard: "I have been compelled to see orphans robbed, starved, and burned for money. I have named the men and accused them and furnished the records and affidavits to convict them, but with no result. I decided long ago that Oklahoma had no citizen who cared whether or not an orphan is robbed or starved or killed – because his dead claim is easier to handle than if he were alive."

Later life, death, and legacy During the rest of her life, Barnard continued to live in Oklahoma (often traveling to Colorado and other states during the summer due to her severe health problems) and she died on February 23, 1930, in Oklahoma City (where she was found dead in a hotel bathroom). She was buried in Oklahoma City (in a grave that was not marked until the 1980s), but today a bronze statue of her is on display on the first floor of the Oklahoma State Capitol. She was inducted in the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 1982.

Electoral history