Ruth Bryan Owen (October 2, 1885 – July 26, 1954) was the daughter of William Jennings Bryan and mother of Helen Rudd Brown. A Democrat, in 1929 she became Florida’s (and the South's) first woman representative in the United States Congress, coming from Florida’s 4th district. Representative Owen was also the first woman to earn a spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1933, she became the first woman ever appointed as a U.S. Ambassador ...
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Ruth Bryan Owen (October 2, 1885 – July 26, 1954) was the daughter of William Jennings Bryan and mother of Helen Rudd Brown. A Democrat, in 1929 she became Florida’s (and the South's) first woman representative in the United States Congress, coming from Florida’s 4th district. Representative Owen was also the first woman to earn a spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1933, she became the first woman ever appointed as a U.S. Ambassador when President Roosevelt appointed her as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark.
In 1903 Ruth Bryan dropped out of the University of Nebraska to marry William H. Leavitt, a well-known Newport, Rhode Island, portrait painter, who was painting Bryan's father's portrait when the couple met. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1909. She married Reginald Owen, a British Army officer in 1910, bearing two more children. Her second husband died in 1928. She spent three years in Oracabessa, Jamaica, where she oversaw the design and construction of her...
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