By Malo and Leonardo
Recently, people have asked for a permanent memorial to the first female senator in the United States to be erected her homeland in Wales. In fact, Martha Hughes Cannon, the first US female senator, was born in a small village in Wales called Llandudno, on Madoc street. She was born there on 1st July 1857, but not a long time after she and her family emigrated and went to live in the United States of America. There, she decided to become a doctor and started helping other women to get the right to vote in Utah, the state in which she and her family lived, when it was founded. During the year 1896, she became a state senator, having narrowly beaten her own husband during the election.
In the United States, her achievements have been rightly recognised with a government building named after her and also a statue in the city where she lived, Salt Lake City. Some Utah State lawmakers voted to put a statue of her in Washington, in the National Statuary Hall, a hall in which every state is allowed to put two statues to commemorate notable people, as well.
There is no memorial to her, however, in Llandudno, where later her family went to live on the Great Orme in a house called Tan y Graig.
Her parents were part of the Mormon religion and emigrated to the USA in 1860. She then became one of Angus M. Cannon’s many wives.
Will Aaron, a historian who has researched Martha Hughes Cannon’s life said: “She’s a well known and significant figure in the US.”