Mary E. Flanery became the first woman elected to the Kentucky legislature in 1921, winning a seat in the House of Representatives from Boyd County. She had worked for woman suffrage and was concerned with marriage and divorce laws and educational reform. At her death in 1933, a bronze marker was placed at her seat, No. 40, in the house chamber. A journalist, suffragist, and politician, she was born in 1867 in Carter County, now Elliott County, wrote for the Ashland Daily Independent from 1904 to 1926, and also taught in Elliott and Carter counties. In 1924 she was chosen as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in New York City. Alongside her public life, she and her husband reared five children. She was buried in Ashland Cementery.