Elizabeth H. Gasque, the first woman U.S. Representative
from South Carolina, carried on a lifelong love affair
with Washington’s social scene. The death of her
husband, Representative Allard Henry Gasque, briefly
added a political dimension to her activities. “She was a
Congressman’s wife 20 years and a Congressman’s widow,”
one journalist wrote in 1939, “who wound up his affairs
and took care of his district as though it were her life’s
work.”1
Thereafter, she never broke her ties to the city.
Elizabeth Hawley Gasque was born Elizabeth “Bessie”
Mills Hawley near Blythewood, South Carolina, on
February 26, 1886, daughter of John Meade and Emina
Nelson Entzminger Hawley. Bessie Hawley was a member
of the southern aristocracy and spent her childhood on the
expansive “Rice Creek” plantation, which covered 4,000
acres.2
She attended the South Carolina Coeducational
Institute in Edgefield, South Carolina, and graduated with
a degree in expression (drama) from Greenville Female
College (now Furman University) in 1907. She married
Allard H. Gasque, a teacher and school administrator, in
1907, and they had four children: Elizabeth, Doris, John,
and Thomas.3
Bessie Gasque became interested in politics
through her social connections. Later she would boast that she had been personally acquainted with every President
from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt.4
In 1923
Allard Gasque won election to the first of eight terms as
a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, eventually
becoming the chairman of the Committee on Pensions
and a champion of war veterans and their families.5
It
was during her husband’s congressional service that Bessie
Gasque fell in love with Washington, plunging into the
social scene. She became one of the regular hosts of an
annual ball to raise funds to fight polio, held on President
Franklin Roosevelt’s birthday. Washington became her
“natural home.”6
Chairman Gasque entered Walter Reed Hospital in
Washington in May 1938 and died there on June 17, the
day after the 75th Congress (1937–1939) adjourned.7
At
the time of his death, Gasque was unopposed for reelection. The district encompassed eight counties in
northeastern South Carolina, including Gasque’s home
county of Florence. State and local Democratic leaders
persuaded Bessie Gasque to run for her husband’s unexpired
term; even the filing fee was provided for her.8
In the
perfunctory one-party special election of September 13,
1938, Elizabeth Gasque succeeded her late husband in little more than name. The election took place on the same day
as that for her successor. John Lanneau McMillan, a former
secretary to Allard Gasque, was elected to the full term in the
76th Congress (1939–1941).9
The 75th Congress had already
adjourned, and although there was always the possibility
that the President would call for a special lame duck session,
observers considered that highly unlikely.10 She captured 96
percent of the vote compared to a combined four percent by
her two male Democratic opponents.
Following the election, Congresswoman Gasque returned
to Washington. The fall races, however, went badly for the
Democrats nationwide. Earlier that summer, President
Roosevelt had led unsuccessful efforts to campaign against
opponents of the New Deal in Democratic Party primaries.
The failure of the highly public “purge,” along with losses
for Roosevelt proponents in many northern races, signaled
the beginning of the end of the New Deal.11 This chain
of events also ended any possibility for a special lame
duck session.
Gasque never received any committee assignments, and
she was never sworn into office. She did, however, continue
to be a presence on Washington’s social scene, attending a
presidential reception held in honor of the new Secretary of
Commerce, Harry Hopkins, in December 1938.12
After the 75th Congress officially ended in January
1939, Gasque returned to South Carolina. She maintained
her social ties in Washington, remaining active largely
through her membership in the Congressional Club. After
former South Carolina Senator Nathaniel Barksdale Dial
died in Washington in 1940, Gasque shared a Washington
home with Dial’s widow, who was noted for her parties.
Locally, Gasque was active in dramatics and was an author
and lecturer. At one point she served as the head of the Fine
Arts Department of South Carolina’s Federation of Women’s
Clubs. In her many travels, she was a constant booster of
South Carolina as a vacation destination.13 She eventually
married A. J. Van Exem. The couple lived at Cedar Tree
Plantation in Ridgeway, South Carolina, where she became
a master tree farmer. She died on November 2, 1989, at the
age of 103.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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