Katherine G. Langley: Kentucky’s first U.S. Congresswoman [Video]

PIKE COUNTY, KY (WOWK) – Kentucky first became a U.S. state in 1792, and in the Commonwealth’s more than 230 years of statehood, only two women have served in either house of the U.S. Congress. The first of those two women was elected from Pike County.

According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, the two women who have served the Bluegrass State as U.S. Representatives are Katherine Gudger Langley and Anne Meagher Northup, both members of the Republican Party. Langley served first, from 1927–1931. Northup would be elected 70 years later, serving between 1997 and 2006. There has yet to be a female U.S. Senator from the Commonwealth.

When Langley won her House seat, women holding congressional offices was still a fairly new concept. Only one woman, Rebecca L. Felton (D-GA) in 1922, had been elected to the U.S. Senate and six other women had been elected to the U.S. House before Langley became the seventh. Jeannette Rankin…