Marie Brehm

The first woman to run for vice-president on the ticket of a ballot-qualified party, Marie Caroline Brehm today is virtually unknown.  She was born 30 June 1859, in Ohio, and died 21 January 1926 after being injured by the collapse of a grandstand at Pasadena, California the previous New Year’s Day.  She is buried at Sandusky, Ohio.
     She taught school at Claremont in Richland County, Illinois during the 1887-88 term, living during that time in the Claremont Resort home of her sister, Mrs. William Rhode and her tavern-keeper brother-in-law.  Miss Brehm was an ardent suffragette and temperance advocate.  She joined the WCTU in 1891 and worked her way up to President of the Illinois state WCTU by 1891. 
     Brehm was part of the “National Party” faction of the Prohibition Party during the 1890s.  She ran for trustee of the State University in 1892, 1894, and 1908. 
     National recognition came to her in 1909, when she was appointed by President Taft to be a delegate to the Twelfth International Congress Against Alcoholism (London).  She was appointed again as a delegate in 1913, this time by President Wilson (Milan).
     Moving to California, she was a Prohibition candidate for the California State Senate in 1920.  She served as the California State Superintendent of WCTU Institutes; she was also Superintendent of Franchise of the National WCTU and First Vice-President of the Woman’s Legislative Council of California.
     Miss Brehm chaired the national Prohibition convention in 1920 and was chosen by acclamation to be our vice-presidential candidate at the 1924 convention.
     She never married.
     A personal idiosyncrasy – Brehm made “Suffragette” part of her legal name:  “Suffragette Marie Caroline Brehm.”  One wonders if her contemporary anti-alcohol crusader Carrie Amelia Nation inspired that?  Nation, who serendipitously had married a man named David Nation, sometimes spelled her given name “Carry,” which then created the slogan “Carry A. Nation.

   --  Data from Wikipedia and from an article by Ron Scherer published
in the Olney (Illinois) Daily Mail on 30 October 2018.

[BACK]