The Dutiful Wife

It was a ripsnorting shivaree. The Old Gray Mare Band of Brownwood blatted out The Eyes of Texas. Diva May Peterson sang Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet, and the crowd stomped and whistled and let out an unearthly rebel yell. Then Miriam Amanda Ferguson, all gussied up in a black satin dress, stood up and took the oath as Governor of Texas.

"Me for Ma." On that day--Jan. 20, 1925--"Ma"' Ferguson became the second woman ever to take office as a state Governor.* Her husband. James E. ("Farmer Jim") Ferguson, had twice been elected Governor (1914, 1916) and served until his impeachment on charges of misusing public funds. After the Texas legislature stripped him of the right to run for public office again, Farmer Jim decided to run his wife instead. In the campaign. Jim Ferguson did most of the talking, made no effort to hide his scheme to govern Texas in his wife's name. The corn pone slogans reeked of duality: "Me for Ma," and "Two Governors for the price of one.''

It was in the days before the Really Big Rich, and few Texans could resist that sort of an appeal. Ma won. A rawboned woman with an American Gothic jaw, she looked as hard as a banker's heart. Actually, she was a college-educated, devoutly religious, well-bred woman who was about as political as peach cobbler. She was, above all, a dutiful wife. Her first act as Governor was to sign an "amnesty" restoring Farmer Jim's right to hold public office. (It was rescinded by her successor.) Though both Fergusons were teetotalers, they opposed Prohibition. In her first term, Ma released 3,600 prisoners (mostly bootleggers), attempted to put a 10% tax on cigarettes (she and Farmer Jim both disapproved of smoking). Running the state economically, she improved Texas' financial situation from a deficit to a $7,000,000 surplus. Even so, the bloom faded quickly from her popularity, largely because of the long shadow of Farmer Jim, and in the next Democratic primary Ma was overwhelmed by her attorney general, Dan Moody, who ungallantly campaigned with a "Clear out the Fergusons" battle cry.

Ma & Pappy. Ma returned happily to her garden and her family, and when, in 1932, her husband told her it was time to run again, she reportedly wept for three nights. But she gamely took off her apron and returned to politics, winning a second lackluster term by 3,000 votes. By 1940, when the aging Farmer Jim instructed her to try one more time, the Ferguson flame had guttered out. Ma was beaten by, of all people, W. Lee ("Pass the biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel, a flour miller and hillbilly singer. After Jim Ferguson died in 1944, Ma retired to the house he had built for her, overlooking the State Capitol in Austin. And there, last week, she died at 86--a lesson in loyalty, a footnote to history, a touch of forever Texas.

* The first, Nellie Tayloe Ross (later director of the U.S. Mint) was sworn in as Governor of Wyoming just 15 days earlier, though both women were elected on the same day. Since then, many have tried, but no other woman has been elected Governor.

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