Frances P. Bolton

Frances Payne Bolton (1885 to 1977) was an American Republican politician from Cleveland, Ohio, and the first woman elected to Congress from that state. Born Frances Payne Bingham into a prominent Cleveland family, she entered the House of Representatives a few months after the death of her husband, Chester C. Bolton, whose seat she took over, and went on to serve fourteen further terms for the 22nd District, made up mostly of Cleveland's eastern suburbs. In the late 1930s and early 1940s she took an isolationist line, opposing the Selective Service Act of 1940 and Lend-Lease in 1941, but after the Second World War she supported the United Nations and UNICEF and backed the independence of African colonies. She sat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led a congressional delegation across Africa in 1955, and sponsored legislation that protected the land across the Potomac from Mount Vernon. She voted for the civil rights acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968 and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She was defeated for a sixteenth term by Charles Vanik in 1968 and died in 1977.