Anne Ector Pleasant
First Lady of Louisiana (1878-1934)
Anne Ector Pleasant (April 16, 1878 – September 13, 1934) was an American school teacher and founder of the private school Pleasant Hall in Shreveport which operated for more than fifty years. Between 1916 and 1920, she was the First Lady of Louisiana and though she supported women's suffrage, she was not in favor of passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, believing voting rights were a state rather than a federal issue.
Early life
Anne Ector was born on April 16, 1878, in Marshall, Texas to Sarah Parish "Sally" (née Chew) and General Matthew D. Ector. Her father was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army, who was wounded during the Atlanta campaign in 1864 and then returned to Texas where he served as a judge. At the time of his death in 1879, he was the presiding judge of the Court of Appeals. Her mother was originally from Kentucky and after her husband's death raised Anne and her siblings, Helen, Walker and William. Ector attended Belwood Seminary in Anchorage, Kentucky and went on to further her schooling at the Sam Houston Normal Institute in Huntsville, Texas, graduating in 1899.
Career
After completing her education, Ector began teaching in Texas and taught for several years until her marriage on February 14, 1906, to Ruffin Pleasant, who was the city attorney for Shreveport, Louisiana. After her marriage, Pleasant was active in the woman's club movement, serving as president of the district Federation of Women's Clubs, while her husband served for six years as city attorney and then worked in private practice as a lawyer. He was appointed as assistant attorney general in 1911, causing the couple to move to New Orleans and then was made attorney general in 1912.
The public source identifies “Anne Ector Pleasant” as first Lady of Louisiana (1878-1934). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Anne, Ector and Pleasant.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anne Ector Pleasant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.