Bina Deneen

Bina Deneen
Bina Deneen in 1905.
First lady of Illinois
In office 1904–1912

Bina Deneen (1868–1950), born Bina Maloney, was the first two-term first lady of Illinois, and the first to give birth in the Illinois Executive Mansion. She was the wife of Charles S. Deneen. Known at the time as "the ideal wife for a governor" for her calm and unassuming style, she was also an active participant in her husband's campaigns, and in the woman's club movement.

Bina Day Maloney was born on February 14, 1868, to a prosperous Carroll County, Illinois farm family. She was born and raised in rural Mount Carroll Township, where she attended the Big Cut district school. Her father was the township's commissioner of roads. Because her parents moved into the town of Mount Carroll several decades later, she was sometimes inaccurately reported as having been born and raised in Mount Carroll itself.

In her teens in the 1880s, she taught school for a time in Sac County, Iowa. She studied at the Mount Carroll Seminary (later known as Shimer College), exiting in 1890. Although then as now primarily a liberal arts institution, the school also offered courses in stenography and typewriting. Deneen performed well enough in her studies to be hired as an instructor of these subjects in 1889 and 1890.

Subsequently, she moved to Chicago and worked briefly as a stenographer or typist, living in a boardinghouse. She married Chicago law student Charles S. Deneen, the brother of a fellow boardinghouse resident, in Princeton, Illinois in 1891. Both hailed from strongly Methodist families; the marriage rites were performed by Mrs. Deneen's sister's husband, a Methodist minister.

I've had an awfully full life, but I've also had an delightful time out of life. I know I'm getting older, but it's only because the birthdays are piling up. I'm keenly interested in what's going on, and I like to watch things happen.
—Bina Deneen, 1930