Elected to the U.S. Senate in early 1931 to complete her late husband's term, Hattie Wyatt Caraway (1878-1950) won election to a full six-year term in 1932 (and again in 1938) to become the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in her own right.

Hattie Wyatt Caraway was born on February 1, 1878, near Bakersville, Tennessee. When she was four years old, in 1882, her family moved to nearby Hustburg, Tennessee, where Hattie grew up working on the family farm and waiting on customers in her father's general store. A bright girl, she had already learned the alphabet before attending a nearby one-room school-house and entered Dickson (Tennessee) Normal College at the age of 14.

At Dickson she met Thaddeus Horatio Caraway, a fellow student several years older than she. She earned a B.A. degree in 1896. After graduation, Hattie, by now engaged to Thaddeus, set out to teach school. The couple...