Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Frances Birkhead Beard, 1859-1958
By Robin Hill, Independent Historian, July 28, 2018
Frances Birkhead Beard, born in Iowa, arrived in Evanston, Wyoming in 1890 to take an appointment as Principal of the High School, and did her work so well that she was elected Superintendent of the city schools in 1892. She married Cyrus Beard after that, and most of her life was spent in Cheyenne, as her husband served on the Supreme Court Bench. He was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming at the time of his death in 1920. She performed war work and church work, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and traveled extensively.
Beard was the first state chairman of the Wyoming chapter of the League of Women Voters, organized in Laramie in 1919 with Carrie Chapman Catt, the national president, as guest of honor. She was selected State Historian in 1923 by a Democratic administration in the state of Wyoming and re-elected in 1927 by a Republican administration.
Sources:
Beach, Cora. Women of Wyoming. Casper, Wyo.: S.E. Boyer & Co., 1927, pp. 105-08.
Beard, Frances Birkhead, ed., Wyoming from Territorial Days to the Present (3 vols., Chicago, 1933).
Gage, M. Joslyn., Anthony, S. B. (Susan Brownell)., Stanton, E. Cady., Harper, I. Husted. eds. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. VI, page 710. [New York]: National American Woman Suffrage Association. [LINK]