Angela Rose Canfield
{{Infobox person
| name = Angela Rose Canfield
| image = Angela Rose Canfield.png
| caption = Angela Rose Canfield after being elected mayor.
| birth_date = 1840
| birth_place = New York
| death_date = August 23, 1925
| death_place = McMinnville, Oregon
| known_for = First female mayor in Illinois
}}
Angela Rose Canfield (1840 – August 23, 1925) was a politician, activist, and milliner in Illinois. In 1915, she was elected mayor of Warren, making her the first female mayor of the town as well as the first woman elected as a mayor statewide.
Biography
Angela Rose Canfield was born in 1840 in New York State.{{Cite news |date=1915-06-04 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-north-platte-semi-weekly-tribune/4800244/ |title=Illinois' First Woman Mayor |work=The North Platte Semi-Weekly Tribune |page=2 |via=Newspapers.com}} {{Open access}}{{Cite news |date=1915-04-22 |title=Woman Made Mayor at 75 |work=The Daily Journal-Gazette}} Around the 1860s, she married O.J. Hildreth; she later remarried.
During the Civil War, she served as superintendent of the U.S. Army messhouse in Nashville. She then worked as a Pinkerton private police officer and combatted the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania in the late 1800s.
Around 1881, Canfield settled in Warren, Illinois, where she became active in the statewide women's suffrage movement.{{Cite news |date=1915-04-22 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/herald-news/165236647/ |title=Woman Elected Warren Mayor First in State |work=The Joliet News |agency=United Press | page=9 |via=Newspapers.com}} {{Open access}} She was also affiliated with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and various other women's activism organizations. In the early 1890s, she established a milliner's shop in the town.
In April 1915, Canfield was elected mayor of Warren, Illinois.{{Cite news |date=1917-10-23 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/herald-and-review/165237260/ |title=Woman Mayor of Warren, Ill. |work=Decatur Herald | page=1 |via=Newspapers.com}} {{Open access}} She defeated two other candidates by a plurality of four votes. On her election, at age 75, she became the first woman mayor in the town as well as across the entire state of Illinois.{{Cite web |title=About Warren |url=https://www.villageofwarren.com/community/about-warren/ |access-date=2025-02-11 |website=Village of Warren |language=en-US}}
Canfield took office on May 1 of that year and served a two-year term. She vowed to punish "boodlers and grafters," as well as law enforcement officers who didn't pull their weight. She stepped down after finishing her term in 1917.{{Cite news |date=1917-07-20 |title=Warren's Ex-Mayoress |work=Freeport Journal-Standard}}
Canfield died on August 23, 1925, in McMinnville, Oregon.{{Cite news |date=1940-09-19 |title=This Was News |work=The Stephenson Farmer}}{{Cite news |date=1925-08-31 |title=The Oregon Country |work=The Oregon Daily Journal}}