Editing Jeannette Rankin (section)

== Early life ==
Rankin was born on June 11, 1880, near [[Missoula]] in [[Montana Territory]], nine years before the territory became a state, to school teacher Olive (''née'' Pickering) and Scottish-Canadian immigrant John Rankin, a wealthy mill owner.<ref name="History House" /> She was the eldest of six children, including five sisters (one of whom died in childhood) and a brother, [[Wellington D. Rankin|Wellington]], who became [[Montana Attorney General|Montana's attorney general]] and later, a justice on the [[Montana Supreme Court]].{{sfnp|Smith|2002|pp=33–34;38}}<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2016/11/07/big-sky-recalling-rankins-legacy/93422310/|title=Under the Big Sky: Recalling Rankin's legacy|last=Mansch|first=Scott|date=November 7, 2016|newspaper=[[Great Falls Tribune]]|access-date=November 19, 2016}}</ref> One of her sisters, [[Edna Rankin McKinnon]], became the first Montana-born woman to pass the bar exam in Montana and was an early social activist for access to [[birth control]].

As an adolescent on her family ranch, Rankin had many tasks, including cleaning, sewing, farm chores, outdoor work, and helping care for her younger siblings. She helped maintain the ranch machinery and once single-handedly built a wooden sidewalk for a building her father owned so it could be rented.{{sfnp|O'Brien|1995|pp=23–25}} Rankin later recorded her childhood observation that while women of the 1890s western frontier labored side by side as equals with men, they did not have an equal political voice—nor a legal right to vote.{{sfnp|Alter|1999|pp=153–157}}

Rankin graduated from high school in 1898. She studied at the [[University of Montana]] and, in 1902, received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. Before her political and advocacy career, she explored a variety of careers, including dressmaking, furniture design, and teaching.{{sfnp|Alter|1999|pp=153–157}}<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.biography.com/people/jeannette-rankin-9451806|title=Jeannette Rankin|website=Biography|language=en-us|access-date=April 12, 2018}}</ref> After her father died in 1904, Rankin took on the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wilson|first=Joan Hof|date=Winter 1980|title=American Foreign Policy: Of Her Pacifism|url=http://montanawomenshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Wilson-Joan-Peace-is-a-Womans-Job-Jeannette-Rankin-and-American-Foreign-Policy-the-Origins-of-Her-Pacifism-r.pdf|journal=[[Montana (journal)|Montana: The Magazine of Western History]]|volume=30|pages=28–41}}</ref>