Pauline Lewelling Devitt

DEVITT, LEWELLING, COOK

Posted By: S. Ferrall (email)
Date: 12/22/2003 at 22:22:06

PAULINE LEWELLING DEVITT.
Member of Board of Education, born April 10, 1877, in the girl's department of the Iowa State Reform school which her father and mother, Lorenzo D. and Angie Cook Lewelling had recently organized near Mt. Pleasant. In 1887, shortly after the death of Mrs. Lewelling, Mr. Lewelling, then president of the board of the State Teachers college, moved his family to Kansas of which state he was elected Governor in 1892. The daughter, Pauline, was graduated from the Wichita high school and from the State University of Kansas and then taught for four years in the high schools of that state. In 1901 she was united in marriage to James Arthur Devitt of Oskaloosa, Iowa, at that time county attorney for Mahaska county. To this union was born three children who have the distinction of being third generation Hawkeyes. Mrs. Devitt was president of the Iowa Equal Suffrage association in 1919 when a special session of the legislature ratified the federal suffrage amendment. During the was she was appointed by Governor Harding a member of the state council of defense and served also as sixth district chairman of the liberty loan committee. In 1920 she was delegate-at-large to the national republican convention. At the time of her appointment to the state board of education in 1921 she was a member of the local school board in Oskaloosa. In 1926-27 she served as vice president of the state conference of social work and in 1927 was reappointed by Governor Hammill to the state board of educaton.

-source: Iowa Official Register, 1927-1928; Biographies of State Officials.