Edith Cowan

Edith Dircksey Cowan (née Brown), MBE (2 August 1861 – 9 June 1932) was an Australian politician, social campaigner and the first woman elected to an Australian parliament. Edith Brown was born and raised in Glengarry (HI) Station near Geraldton, Western Australia on 2 August 1861. The second daughter of Kenneth Brown and Mary Eliza Dircksey née Wittenoom, she was born into an influential and respected family that included her grandfathers Thomas Brown and John Burdett Wittenoom, and an uncle, Maitland Brown. When she was seven years old her mother died in childbirth, and her father sent her to a Perth boarding school run by the Cowan sisters, whose brother James she would later marry. Her father remarried, but the marriage was unhappy...