Ruth Lucille Armour (Dunham)

Ruth Lucille Armour was born September 1, 1900, in Saint Mary, Hancock County, Illinois, the daughter of Harry Ellington Armour and Gabriella Lee Clark. She had a younger sister, Doris Evelyn Armour (later Balcom).

On October 3, 1915, in Wichita, Kansas, she married Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham. The couple had two sons: Ralph Emerson Dunham (1916–2012) and Stanley Armour Dunham (1918–1992). Stanley Armour Dunham later became the maternal grandfather of U.S. President Barack Obama, making Ruth his great-grandmother.

Ruth's life ended tragically at age 26. According to a contemporary newspaper account (The Topeka Daily Capital, November 27, 1926), she and her husband had traveled to Melvern, Kansas, to spend Thanksgiving with his sister. Following a disagreement between them, Ruth returned alone to Topeka. Before taking her own life by poison, she left a letter saying she believed her husband no longer loved her. Her body was found by her husband on the morning of November 26, 1926, at his auto repair shop on West Sixth Avenue in Topeka. She was buried at Sunset Lawns Cemetery in El Dorado, Butler County, Kansas.