Crystal Snow Jenne

Crystal Brilliant Snow Jenne was the first woman to run for the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives in the Alaska Territory.

Biography
Crystal Brilliant Snow Jenne was born in Sonora, California on May 30, 1884.

In 1887, she emigrated to the Alaska Territory with her parents, who worked as a troupe of actors to entertain the miners. As her father joined the Klondike Gold Rush, they moved to Circle City where her father built an opera house. After he found gold, they moved to Seattle, but they lost their money and returned to Alaska.

After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley where she majored in Music, she taught in Paso Robles, California. From 1907 to 1908, she taught in Douglas, Alaska. She spent the next summer singing for miners in Skagway, Haines, Dawson, Fairbanks, Nome, etc. She then attended the Spencerian Commercial School in Cleveland, Ohio to study Business. She then taught in Skagway, Sitka, and the Mendenhall Valley.

She moved back to Juneau in 1914. She was married in 1916 and had three children. Her husband died in 1938. The next year, she published a volume of historical poetry. Meanwhile, she worked in church choirs, taught, and ran a flower shop. In 1934, she ran as a Democrat for the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives. She lost four races, and was elected in 1940, and reelected in 1942.

She was a member of the Alaska Federation of Women's Clubs, the Democratic Women's Club, the Juneau Women's Club, and the National Business and Professional Women's Club.

She died at the Sitka Pioneer Home on June 5, 1968.

Bibliography
 The Ghost of Old Juneau (1939)

References

External links

 Crystal Jenne at 100 Years of Alaska's Legislature
 Crystal Snow and Monte Snow in theatrical costume from Alaska's Digital Archives – photo of Crystal Snow and brother Montgomery Adolph "Monte" Snow (1882–1957) as young children, dressed in theatrical garb and striking poses

Category:1884 births
Category:1968 deaths
Category:20th-century American politicians
Category:20th-century American women politicians
Category:Alaska Democrats
Category:American schoolteachers
Category:Burials at Evergreen Cemetery (Juneau, Alaska)
Category:Educators from Alaska
Category:Members of the Alaska Territorial Legislature
Category:Musicians from Alaska
Category:People from Sitka, Alaska
Category:People from Sonora, California
Category:People from the Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska
Category:People of the Klondike Gold Rush
Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni
Category:Women in Alaska politics
Category:Writers from Alaska
Category:Writers from California
Category:20th-century American educators