Mary D. Lowman

Mary D. McGaha was born on a farm in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.[1] She became a schoolteacher and in 1866 married a man named George W. Lowman, with whom she had two children.[1] They moved to Kansas and settle in the small town of Oskaloosa, where she became a teacher of recently emancipated black students.[1]

In 1885, she became the city's deputy county clerk and deputy register of deeds.[1][4] In 1888, the women of Oskaloosa, dissatisfied with poor city management, decided to run an entire slate of women for municipal office.[1][4] (Although American women did not yet have a national right to vote, Kansas women had been given the right to vote in some municipal elections one year earlier.)[5] The "Oskaloosa Improvement Ticket"[6] won by a two-to-one margin,[4] making Lowman the first woman in Kansas to serve as mayor with a city council composed entirely of women.[1] Newspapers across the country covered the unusual election of an all-women municipal administration.[2] Lowman was elected only a year after Susanna M. Salter became the nation's first woman mayor.

When Lowman and her council took office, the city treasury was empty and the city in debt.[1] Lowman and her 5-member council were re-elected after their first year in office, with two members of the council being replaced by other women.[1][2] After two years in office, Lowman and her council left the city with a replenished treasury.[1]

Lowman died in 1912 of burns received when her clothing caught fire at a cookstove.[2]