AMERICA'S FIRST WOMAN MAYOR
BY ALFRED HEWETSON MITCHELL
A native of Ohio who became America's
first woman mayor
has been honored at Argonia, Kansas, by
a plaque which was
erected through the efforts of Kansas
club women and dedicated
on November 10, 1933. Kansas believes in
flowers for the living,
so this plaque was unveiled in the
presence of Mrs. Susanna M.
Salter, the Ohio-born woman who had made
history at the age of
twenty-seven when she was elected mayor
of Argonia in 1887.
Susanna Madora Salter was born March 2,
1860, on a farm
near Lamira. Belmont County, Ohio, the
daughter of Oliver and
Terissa Ann White Kinsey. Both were of
Quaker parentage,
their ancestors having come over from
England with William
Penn's colonists on the ship Welcome.
The Kinsey family moved
from Ohio to Kansas in 1872 and settled
near Silver Lake on an
80-acre farm ten miles west of Topeka.
Susanna attended country schools until
1878, when she en-
tered the Kansas State Agricultural
College at Manhattan, Kan-
sas, as a sophomore. There she met Lewis
Allison Salter, son of
former Lieutenant Governor Melville J.
Salter; she was married to
him September 1, 1880. For a year the
newlyweds lived on a farm
near Thayer, Neosho County, Kansas, and
then they moved to
Cherryvale where Lewis Salter worked in
a hardware store.
Argonia's opportunity to become famous
was occasioned by
Salter's accepting a position as manager
of the Argonia branch
of Carson & Baldwin of Cherryvale.
The Salters' second son,
born February 13, 1883, was the first
baby born in the new town
and was named Francis Argonia, the first
name being for Mrs.
Baughman, the wife of the doctor who
attended. In 1885, Mrs.
Salter's parents moved to Argonia, where
Oliver Kinsey and his
son-in-law purchased a hardware store
which was operated under
the firm name of Kinsey & Salter.
The town of Argonia was
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