Margaret Louisa Sullivan Burke

Originally from Evansville, Indiana, Margaret Sullivan Burke graduated from Butler University, married twice and had four children. Burke was a co-founder and first president of the League of American Pen Women in 1897. Working as a stringer for the Philadelphia Item, in 1890, she became the first woman to qualify for entry into the Press Gallery at the U.S. Capitol under new rules limiting membership to those who derived their primary salary as dispatchers to daily newspapers (rules intended to professionalize journalism, and to exclude lobbyists, women, and people of color from obtaining press passes).

She is the author of The Story of Hercules, or the Truth about Financial Legislation of the Republican Party (date unknown), and The Truth about our Finances (1892). Her journalism and poetry was printed in major newspapers across the U.S., sometimes under the gender-neutral name of M.S. Burke, and sometimes under Maggie Lute Burke. She is buried in Glenwood Cemetery.