Representative Katharine Price Collier St. George

Katharine Price Collier St. George (July 12, 1894 – May 2, 1983) was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from New York, serving nine consecutive terms in Congress from 1947 to 1965. A cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she was part of the extended Delano–Roosevelt family network that played a prominent role in American public life in the first half of the twentieth century. Over the course of her eighteen years in the House of Representatives, she contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American history, representing the interests of her New York constituents and participating in the broader democratic process.

St. George was born in Bridgnorth, England, on July 12, 1894, to American parents. Her family returned to the United States when she was two years of age. Her father, Hiram Price Collier, was a former Unitarian minister, and her mother, Catherine Delano Collier, was the younger sister of Sara Delano Roosevelt, the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Through this maternal line, St. George was closely connected to one of the most influential political families of her era. She had a younger sister, Sara Collier, named in honor of their aunt Sara Delano Roosevelt. From her mother’s first marriage to Charles Albert Robbins, she was also the younger half-sister of Warren Delano Robbins, a career diplomat who served in several posts abroad, further linking her early life to public service and international affairs.

As a young woman, St. George spent part of her early adulthood in Washington, D.C., where she and her family resided briefly at 2144 Wyoming Avenue. This period in the nation’s capital exposed her to the workings of the federal government and the political environment that would later shape her own career. In June 1919, the family relocated to Tuxedo Park, New York, an exclusive residential community in Orange County. Tuxedo Park became her long-term home and the base from which she would eventually launch her political career. She remained closely associated with this community for the rest of her life, and it was there that she would much later die at the age of eighty-eight in 1983.

St. George married George Baker St. George, with whom she had children, including a daughter, Priscilla St. George. Priscilla’s life reflected the family’s continued engagement with public affairs and prominent American families: she married first, in 1936, Angier Biddle Duke (1915–1995), an American diplomat and heir to the Duke tobacco fortune, with that marriage lasting until 1940. Priscilla later married New York State Senator Allan A. Ryan Jr. (1903–1981) in 1941, a marriage that continued until 1950. These connections further embedded Katharine St. George in circles where politics, diplomacy, and public service intersected, reinforcing the milieu in which she herself pursued elective office.

By the mid-1940s, St. George had become active in Republican politics in New York, drawing on her family background, community standing in Tuxedo Park, and familiarity with national issues. In the 1946 elections, she was elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives from New York, beginning her first term on January 3, 1947. She would be reelected eight times, serving nine terms in total and remaining in office until January 3, 1965. Her tenure in Congress spanned the early Cold War, the post–World War II economic expansion, the Korean War, the beginning of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the early years of the modern civil rights movement, placing her at the center of debates over foreign policy, domestic economic policy, and social change.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Katharine Price Collier St. George participated actively in the legislative process and represented the interests of her New York district within the Republican Party framework. Serving during a period when women were still relatively rare in Congress, she was part of the early generations of women in the United States House of Representatives and helped to normalize women’s presence in national legislative life. Throughout her eighteen years in office, she contributed to committee work, floor debates, and the development of legislation affecting both her constituents and the nation, and she was recognized as a steady, experienced legislator within her party.

St. George left Congress at the conclusion of her ninth term in 1965, after nearly two decades of continuous service. In her later years, she remained associated with Tuxedo Park, New York, where she had lived since 1919 and where she continued to be regarded as a prominent local figure and former member of Congress. Katharine Price Collier St. George died in Tuxedo Park on May 2, 1983, at the age of eighty-eight, closing a life that linked the Delano–Roosevelt family legacy, early female participation in the House of Representatives, and long-standing service as a Republican representative from New York.