When Gov. Steve Merrill retired in 1996, then-state Sen. Jeanne Shaheen defeated Ovide Lamontagne to become the Granite State’s first woman elected to the governor’s office.
Shaheen served until January 2003, only the fourth person to serve three consecutive terms as New Hampshire’s governor.
In 2008, she became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire, and the first woman in American history to be elected both a U.S. governor and a U.S. senator.
Although Shaheen was the first woman to win a gubernatorial election in the Granite State, Vesta Roy was the first woman to serve as governor.
Roy was president of the New Hampshire Senate, the first woman to hold that title, when outgoing Gov. Hugh Gallen died in office in December 1982. She served as acting governor for seven days until governor-elect John H. Sununu was sworn in.
N.H. Historical Society