Alice Mary Robertson

Alice Mary Robertson (born Jan. 2, 1854, Tullahassee Mission, Creek Nation, Indian Territory [now Tullahassee, Okla., U.S.]—died July 1, 1931, Muskogee, Okla.) American educator and public official, remembered for her work with Native American and other schools in Oklahoma and as a U.S. congressional representative from that state.

Robertson was the daughter of missionary teachers among the Creek Indians. She attended Elmira (New York) College in 1871–73 and then worked for six years as a clerk in the Office of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. After a brief period of teaching in the mission school at Tullahassee, she became secretary to Richard H. Pratt, superintendent of the Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Indian School, in 1880. During 1882–83 she made a fund-raising lecture tour to finance the building of a new mission school at Nuyaka to replace one that had burned at Tullahassee.

In 1885 Robertson was given charge of a Presbyterian mission boarding school for girls in Muskogee. Under her guidance the school grew and obtained a charter as Henry Kendall College in 1894. (The school moved to Tulsa in 1907 and became the University of Tulsa in 1920.) She taught English, history, and civics at the college until 1899. In 1900 she was appointed the first federal supervisor of Creek education, and from 1905 to 1913 she was postmistress of Muskogee. She then retired for some years to her farm. During World War I she became famous as Miss Alice, who met every troop train passing through Muskogee and distributed coffee and refreshments to the soldiers. The canteen service that grew from her single efforts became the nucleus of the Muskogee Red Cross.

In 1920 Robertson was elected to Congress as a Republican from Oklahoma’s Second District. During her term she was the only female member of Congress. After her defeat for reelection she was a welfare worker at the Veterans Hospital in Muskogee in 1923–25.