Izetta Jewel Brown

Izetta Jewell Kenny was born in Hackettstown, New Jersey, November 24, 1883. She came to West Virginia in 1914 as the bride of Congressman William Gay Brown of Kingwood. Already a wellknown actress and an activist for women’s rights, during her West Virginia years Brown blazed the way for women in politics.

When her husband died in 1916, just three months after the birth of their daughter, she took over management of their Preston County farm and established a modern dairy operation. Active in farm organizations, she attended the first farm women’s camp at Jackson’s Mill and later served on a committee to improve wool production in the state.

Izetta Brown was sometimes called the "first lady" because she was often the first women to reach an achievement.

• In 1928 she starred in the first play to be broadcast by TV in New York.
• In 1909 she was first woman to drive a car over the mountains between Portland, Or. and Seattle, Wa.
• In 1920 she became the first woman to second the namination for a presidential nominee and became the first woman to speak at a National Convention.
• In 1924 she received an honorific nomination for vice president.
• She was the first woman south of the Mason-Dixon line to run for the U.S. Senate, as she battled Matthew Mansfield Neely for the Democratic nomination in 1922 and lost by only 6,000 votes.

In 1925, she married Hugh Miller, dean of the school of engineering at George Washington University. They moved to New York where she ran for Congress in 1930, became the commissioner of public welfare in Schenectady in 1931, and later served as a regional administrator with New Deal relief agencies, occasionally visiting West Virginia.

She died in La Jolla, California, in November 1978.

Links to additional material:

• http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/667
• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=49772286
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378625/
• http://via.lib.harvard.edu/via/deliver/deepcontentItem?recordId=olv...
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0422412/bio