American politician Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977) gained fame in the 1920s when she was elected governor of Wyoming, becoming the first woman in the country to hold such a post. After leaving that office, she had an active career in national Democratic politics and was named director of the U.S. Mint by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, a position she held for nearly 20 years.

Although she had never planned a career in politics, Nellie Tayloe Ross became one of the best-known politicians of the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. After the death of her husband, William Bradford Ross, the governor of Wyoming, in 1924, Ross was elected to replace him, becoming the first woman to serve as a governor in the United States upon her inauguration on January 5, 1925. As a Democrat in a primarily Republican state, Ross did not accomplish much...