Mary Risteau

Mary Eliza Watters Risteau was born in Towson, Maryland on April 24, 1890, to Elizabeth (née Watters) and William M. Risteau.[3][4] She graduated from Towson High School in 1907.[3][2][5] In 1912, she graduated from Towson University (then the Maryland State Normal School).[4] She completed a special advanced course of study in Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University in 1917 before serving as a schoolteacher.[2] In 1938, Risteau received her L.L.B. Degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law.[2][6] In 1917, she moved to Eden Manor, the Watters family dairy farm, a property her mother inherited in Jarrettsville.[4][6]

In 1921, Risteau, a Democrat, became the first woman elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and served four terms (1922-1926 and 1931–1935) followed by an election to the Maryland Senate in 1935 for a single term.[1][2][7][8] She ran for the Senate first in 1926 but lost to A. G. Ensor.[8][9] She served on several committees while in the Senate, including the Committee on Education and the Committee on Agriculture, during her time in the General Assembly, and she was a strong sponsor of women's rights.[2] She sided with the "wet forces" and served on the Senate Temperance Committee and spoke out against Prohibition.[2][10] In 1944, she ran against incumbent Harry Streett Baldwin for Maryland's 2nd congressional district.[11]

Concurrent to her role as a legislator, she served as the first woman on the Maryland State Board of Education for 16 years.[2][3] She was appointed to this position by Governor Albert Ritchie in 1922.[2] Risteau was also a clerk of the Circuit Court for Harford County; she was appointed as the first woman clerk in 1938 and served for one year.[2][10][3] In 1939, she was appointed as the first woman State Commissioner of Loans in Maryland.[2][10][4][3]

In 1951, she was elected one final time to the House of Delegates, where she served for another four years.[2][12]

In 1987, she was posthumously inducted into Towson High School's Alumni Hall of Fame.[5] In 1988, she was posthumously inducted into Maryland Women's Hall of Fame.[12]

The Mary E. W. Risteau Multi Services Center, a district court building in Bel Air, Maryland was named in her honor.[6][13][14]

Risteau never married.[4] She was known as "Miss Mary" by contemporaries.[4]

She died on July 24, 1978, at her dairy farm in Jarrettsville at the age of 88.[10] She is buried at William Watters Memorial Church Cemetery in Jarrettsville.[14]