Ruth 1

The daughter William Jennings Bryan, one of the early twentieth century's most well-known political figures, Ruth Bryan Owen built her own career in politics, with a slew of firsts for women in American government domestically and internationally. She, along with two other women, was the tenth woman to take a seat in Congress, and the first from the state of Florida. She was also the first woman to sit on the Foreign Affairs committee. After losing a reelection race, she became the first woman to be appointed a US ambassador.

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(Technically Owen's title was "minister" - though now the chiefs of mission to US embassies are universally titled "ambassador", that was untrue until the 1960s. Eugenie Anderson is credited as the first woman to be appointed chief of mission at the "ambassador" rank. In 2022, both women would have been granted the title of "ambassador".)

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Ruth Bryan was born in 1885 in Jacksonville, Illinois, to Mary E. Baird, a practicing lawyer, and William Jennings Bryan, a rising politician.

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Her childhood was spent in service to her father's rising political fortunes. When she was two, her father was elected to the Nebraska legislature and the family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. When she was five, her father was elected to the House of Representatives. Bryan often accompanied her father to the House floor; she was dubbed "the sweetheart of the House" by male representatives of the House of Representatives.

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There is a good chance that, if you have heard the name William Jennings Bryan, it is in relation to his role in the 1925 Scopes trial. The trial famously put a Tennessee science teacher on trial for teaching evolution. Bryan was the prosecuting attorney; by 1925, he had become rather well-known for his anti-evolution activism. Yet that final act, famous and embarrassing though it may have been, was only one part of a long and consequential career that traversed politics and law. (Five of Bryan's homes from various are preserved on the National Register of Historic Places, which demonstrates something of his significance to his time period.)

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Bryan was 15 when her father was jettisoned to political superstardom. At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, he delivered a speech known as the "Cross of Gold" speech. While no recordings are known to exist of the speech, historical comparison can be made between it and Ann Richards' keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention and Barack Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The speech's content is rather challenging to interpret from a 2022 lens, but it emphasized his belief in bimetallism and free silver. He decried the gold standard, concluding the speech, "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold" (hence its historic title).

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William Jennings Bryan was selected by the Democrats as their 1896 presidential candidate by based upon the speech. Though he lost the general election, he made an impression that would last. At 36, he remains the youngest person selected as a major party's presidential nominee.

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Bryan was selected again as the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1900; Ruth Bryan was 15.

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Ruth Bryan attended public schools in Washington, D.C. and a private girls' school in Godfrey, Illinois. She attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln for two years, beginning in 1901. She departed the university in 1903 when she married an artist; the couple had two children before divorcing.

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Ruth Bryan's relationship with her father was strained by her divorce; William Jennings Bryan was profoundly religious and tended towards fundamentalism. Still, she served as his press secretary when he, again, was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1908.

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Ruth Bryan remarried in 1910, to an officer of the Royal British Engineers named Reginald Owen; the couple had two children.

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The Owen family spent much of the 1910s overseas, following Reginald Owen's duty posts. In Cairo in 1915, Ruth Owen joined the British Volunteer Aid Detachment as a nurse to care for convalescent soldiers. Owen also established a volunteer entertainment troupe, the “Optimists,” that performed at military hospitals in the Middle East. While the Owens were abroad, William Jennings Bryan reached his highest office as President Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State.

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Reginald Owen's health began to fair in 1919. The Owens moved to Miami, Florida. William Jennings Bryan had settled in the area after the conclusion of his Secretary of State service, and the Owens wanted to be.

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Owen supported her family as a lecturer and a faculty member of the University of Miami.

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Owen also dabbled in the film industry. She was director, producer, and screenwriter for a feature film in 1922, titled "Once Upon a Time/Scheherazade." The film is now lost, and very little is known of it. Owen, though, was immensely proud, and believed herself to a be true pioneer for women in the film industry.

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William Jennings Bryan died in 1925, just days after the conclusion of the Scopes trial.

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The very next year, Ruth Bryan Owen began her political career. She ran for Congress from Florida, a state that had refused to ratify the 19th amendment, in 1926; she lost the Democratic primary to the incumbent by just 800 votes.

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The year 1927 proved a challenging year for Owen: husband Reginald Owen died and a devastating hurricane ripped through the Miami area. Owen contemplated withdrawing from politics, stating that "there was not the friendliest feeling toward any woman taking her place in political life" (a massive understatement, quite likely).

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She decided to run again in 1928, though. Her efforts to provide relief for the victims of the Miami hurricane had drawn attention to her cause. She courted newspaper editors assiduously. Moreover, she proved to have campaigning and speaking capabilities comparable to her father. Her energetic oratory was widely noted, and she delivered an estimate 500 stump speeches across her district.

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Nationally, Democratic leaders were displeased with Owen. She refused to endorse the 1928 presidential nominee, Al Smith, on the basis of his Catholicism. While hardly anti-Catholic herself, the Florida electorate was violently anti-Catholic, and she feared a connection with Smith would hinder her campaign efforts.

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Owen won the Democratic primary by more than 14,000 votes against the same incumbent she had faced in 1926. She won the general election decisively, even as the Republican presidential candidate, Herbert Hoover, won the state decisively.

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The campaign didn't end on election day. The Republican candidate, William C. Lawson, contested the election. Lawson claimed that Owen had lost her citizenship when she married an Englishman and lived outside the United States. He claimed she had not recovered her citizenship under the provisions of the 1922 Cable Act, which allowed women married to foreign men to petition for repatriation upon their return to the United States, until 1925, thus not allowing her seven years' required citizenship under the Constitution to run for Congress.

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Owen challenged Lawson, delivering a persuasive defense of her eligibility before the House Elections Committee, which yielded an amendment to the law.

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Owen was sworn into Congress on 4 March 1929; she was one of three new women in Congress worn in that day, the tenth women to take seats in Congress.

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Owen was known for constituent services. She supported legislation to protect Florida's citrus fruit. She introduced legislation to set aside thousands of acres of the Everglades to be a national park; though that effort failed, it set the stage for a later designation. In perhaps the most controversial move of her time in Congress, Owen voted in favor of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff, which raised duties on imports in May 1929. Considering her father’s staunch opposition to tariffs, many political observers expressed shock. Owen insisted she was only following the wishes of the voters in her district. She established an annual program (using some of her own money) to bring high school boys and girls from her district to Washington, DC, for training as future leaders.

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Owen made children and families a legislative priority. She suggested the creation of a Cabinet-level department to oversee the health and welfare of families and children, a “Department of Home and Child.”

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In December 1929, Owen became the first woman to win a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. From this position, she became focused on making sure the United States played an active role in significant international conferences.

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Owen was also an adamant supporter of Prohibition and the 18th amendment. It was her support of Prohibition that cost her support. Though she won her 1930 reelection race uncontested, Prohibition cost her the 1932 Democratic primary. Owen, embarrassed, contemplating resigning immediately but decided to wait till the end of her term.

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She came to support the repeal of the 18th amendment, despite her own misgivings.

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In April 1933, just a month after leaving Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Owen, as Minister to Demark. She was the first woman to head a diplomatic legation.

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In 1936, Owen married Captain Borge Rohde of the Danish Royal Guards. Because her marriage meant that she was a citizen of both Denmark and the United States, she had to resign her diplomatic post. She was an active campaigner for Roosevelt's reelection in 1936, though.

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From 1938 to 1954, she served on the Advisory Board of the Federal Reformatory for Women. In 1949 President Harry S. Truman appointed her as an alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. Owen lived in Ossining, New York, lecturing and publishing several well-received books on Scandinavia.

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She died in Copenhagen on July 26, 1954, at age 68, during a trip to accept the Danish Order of Merit from King Frederick IX recognizing her contributions to American-Danish relations.

Ruth Alston Brown (née Weston; 1928–2006) was an American singer-songwriter and actress, sometimes known as the "Queen of R&B". She was noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as "So Long", "Teardrops from My Eyes" and "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean". For these contributions, Atlantic became known as "the house that Ruth built" (alluding to the popular nickname for the old Yankee Stadium). Brown was a 1993 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, deceased justice of SCOTUS, is also a bearer of this name.

I can't believe nobody has brought up the famous actress Ruth Buzzi yet. Ruth Buzzi was one of the most famous performers on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and she played her signature character Gladys Ormphby. She stood out in the 1960s for her very unique personality and looks.

Ruth Zakarian is an American actress, model and beauty queen who was the winner of the first ever Miss Teen USA pageant, held in 1983 in Lakeland, Florida. She went on to compete in Miss USA 1984 as Miss Teen USA 1983.

Baby Ruth candy bars were named after Grover Cleveland's daughter. She was born between his two terms of office which was popular. She died of heart problems at 14.
Born: October 3, 1891, New York City, NY
Died: January 7, 1904, Princeton, NJ
She was very famous, and mourned by many. She was known as Baby Ruth. Babe Ruth was a last name (not a famous bearer).

I can't believe no one has mentioned the character Ruth May from The Poisonwood Bible. She is the youngest daughter of the Price family. Her family goes on a mission trip to the Congo. She dies after getting bitten by a snake, which causes her family to fall apart.

American actress Ruth Hussey (1911-2005).

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a Supreme Court Justice, and was also the first Jewish woman to appointed to the Court.

This was the name of Rose's snobbish, elitist mother in James Cameron's Titanic. Nice name despite the negative association.

Ruth is a character in Kazuo Ishiguro's amazing (and depressing) novel Never Let Me Go, played by Keira Knightley in the film adaptation.

Not really a famous bearer, but Ross and Rachel considered this for their baby on Friends. They decided against it, when Rachel said "We'll have our very own Baby Ruth".

Ruth Etting (November 23, 1897 – September 24, 1978) was an American singing star and actress of the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film.

Ruth "Ruthie" Camden was a character on the once-popular show "Seventh Heaven." She was played by Mackenzie Rosman. The show ran from 1996-2007.

Ruth Condomine in Noel Coward's comedy, "Blithe Spirit"! (I played this character when we did the play at our school, and it was fun, though the character was a bit snobbish and overbearing :)

Kate Bush's song "Running up That Hill" is oftentimes referred to as "RUTH" by her fans. I think it is a lovely name and I like the association with Kate Bush.

Ruth Connors is a character in Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones".

Ruth, a "Piratical Maid of all work," is a character from Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta "The Pirates of Penzance" (1879).

Ruth Jameson is the main female character in Gene Stratton-Porter's novel "The Harvester."

Ruth Huckaback is a character in R. D. Blackmore's novel "Lorna Doone."

Ruth Wilson is an English actress best known for playing the title character in the 2006 BBC miniseries "Jane Eyre."

Ruth Roman (December 22, 1922 – September 9, 1999) was an American actress. She was born Norma Roman in the Boston suburb of Lynn, Massachusetts and as a young girl pursued her desire to become an actress by enrolling in the prestigious Bishop Lee Dramatic School in Boston. Following completion of her studies Roman headed to Hollywood where she obtained bit parts in several films before being cast in the title role in the 1945 thirteen episode serial Jungle Queen.

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In the early 1950s, The Jungle Queen became one of the television serials that brought Roman a whole new audience of baby boomers. In 1949 she had a secondary but important role in the acclaimed 1949 film, Champion. In one of her most memorable roles, Roman costarred with Farley Granger and Robert Walker in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train (1951).

There is an author named Ruth Rendell aka Barbara Vine.

I always associate the name Ruth with the girl that Arnold had a crush on in the Nickelodeon show "Hey Arnold!" I really love it, and I'm glad it's not as popular as it used to be. :)

Hollywood legend Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis. Since her mother was also named Ruth, Bette used her nickname throughout her life.

Ruth Horáčková is songwriter Michal Horáček´s daughter.

This always makes me think of Ruth Jamison from "Fried Green Tomatoes." I love that movie!

Ruth Jones was the birth name of famous blues, jazz and gospel singer Dinah Washington.

The little girl in the cartoon "One Big Happy" is called Ruthie. She is named after her grandmother who is also featured in the script.

Ruth is the fifth book in Lori Copeland's Brides of the West series. It's a sweet story, I think.