LOWMAN, Mrs. Mary D.

Mary D. Lowman.jpg
Mary D. Lowman article with photo 1888 Richmond Dispatch.jpg
Mary D. Lowman and other female elected officials 1888 Democratic Messenger .jpg

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Mary D. Lowman, who served as mayor of Oskaloosa, Kansas, was born in Shelocta, Indiana County, Pennsylvania, on January 27, 1842.  She married George W. Lowman in 1866 and moved to Kansas.  Mary became the mother of two children.

She taught for many years in Pennsylvania and Kansas, including three years in Kansas when Mary focused her attention on teaching newly emancipated African-Americans.

Also committed to fighting for religious causes, Mary, a Presbyterian, gave significant time to this work.

Mary was Assistant to the Register of Deeds, her husband, in her hometown of Oskaloosa, Kansas before running for and being elected mayor in 1888.  She and her team of female council members were very successful in administering Oskaloosa, and they were reelected in 1889.  They received many notices in the press and much attention.

Tragically, as the  Topeka State Journal  explains, Mary died "from burns sustained when her clothing caught fire, while preparing a meal" at her home in Oskaloosa.  She passed away the next day, June 2, 1912, and was buried in Oskaloosa's Pleasant View Cemetery.

In the article discussing her passing, Topeka State Journal described Mary as "a woman of fine character and rare good sense and the finest modesty, and she bravely and quietly, with her assistants, went on with the work of governing the little city of a thousand people, and it was well governed, too, and an example set that told for the right for years following."

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