History Minutes: Women take over Umatilla city council in 1916

      Laura Stockton Starcher // CN 009047

On December 5, 1916, Laura Stockton Starcher was elected the first woman mayor of the town of Umatilla, Oregon.  She defeated the incumbent, her husband E. E. Starcher, by a vote of twenty-six to eight.

Starcher was joined in victory by four other Umatilla women who claimed the remaining open town council seats and the posts of recorder and treasurer.  Only two men retained elective office.  The wholesale change in the town’s leadership received state and national attention, with several commentators viewing the affair with amusement.  The New York Herald gleefully reported, “Strong men wriggled and flushed under the biting satire of Mrs. Starcher’s inaugural address, which was largely devoted to a skillful dissection of mere man’s foibles, weaknesses, faults shortcomings, vices, general uselessness, and worthlessness.  But they sat and ‘took their medicine.’”

When Starcher took office, she announced that contrary to “many wild speculations” about “the so-called petticoat government . . . we will manage the affairs of this municipality and do it with a creditable manner without a shadow of a doubt.”  Starcher and the four other women elected to the town council inaugurated a program of progressive action which included social reform.

Laura Starcher served a total of eight months of her two-year term, leaving office for health reasons.  Stella Paula was elected mayor in 1918. But when the original cohort of women elected in 1916 finally decided to leave office, no new women came forward to take their places.  As a result, the election of 1920 returned an all-male city government.