Cecil Murray Harden (November 21, 1894 – December 5, 1984) was an American educator who became a Republican politician and an advocate of women's rights.

[4] On December 22, 1914, Cecil Murray married Frost Revere Harden, "who eventually became an automobile dealer in Covington.

Harden became even more active in Republican politics in 1933, after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office and appointed a Democrat to replace her husband as the Covington postmaster.

Senator, Margaret Chase Smith, and Ohio's U.S. Representative, Frances Bolton, to urge the Republican Party to adopt platform planks of interest to women.

She was also critical of U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's plan in 1956 to close its heavy water plant in Dana, Indiana, which was within her congressional district.

[3][4] Harden, who aligned her political interests with the Eisenhower administration, lost her bid for a sixth term in the U.S. House to Democrat Fred Wampler, a Terre Haute high school football coach, in 1958 by slightly more than a two-percent margin.

[4] Although her final congressional term ended in January 1959, Harden remained in Washington, D.C. Two months later, in March 1959, she was appointed to serve as special assistant for women's affairs to U.S. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield.

[5] In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Harden to the National Advisory Committee for the White House Conference on Aging, where she served in 1972 and 1973.

[4] On December 14, 1974, President Gerald R. Ford signed a bill renaming Mansfield Lake in Parke County, Indiana, in Harden's honor.

Under the Flood Control Act of 1938, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed and built the lake by damming Big Raccoon Creek as part of flood control project for Big Raccoon Creek and the Lower Wabash River watersheds in Parke County.