Gladys Pyle was the first woman elected to the S.D. House, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, and the first woman to address a national political convention. Pyle was born in Huron, South Dakota in 1890. She attended Huron College, earned a degree, and taught school in Miller, Wessington, and Huron. Pyle's father had been a South Dakota attorney general and her mother, Mamie, had been very active in the women's suffrage movement. (South Dakota women were granted voting rights in 1918, a year before federal passage of the 19th Amendment.) In 1923, Gladys Pyle became the first woman elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives. She served in the House until 1927, when she took over as South Dakota's Secretary of State. Pyle sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1930 but lost by a narrow margin. She earned a living outside of politics in the insurance business. After U.S. Senator Peter Norbeck died in 1936, Governor Tom Berry appointed fellow Democrat Herbert E