Subject: female lawyers
From: "Susan Nenadic" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:24:52 -0400

You may recall that I visited the museum with Dean Smith and we spoke
about women who practiced law.  I have been out of town, but now will
get a reply to you.  Also, If you clarify the year and names of the
women in the photograph, I will check the Bentley Library to see what
happened to those particular women.

Until then, I can tell you that women did practice law though it was a
fairly hostile environment.  The Law School at Michigan opened to
women in 1870 when the entire university became available to them.
There were women in every class.  The fourteenth woman to be a
licensed lawyer in the US lived and practiced in Ann Arbor.  Her name
was Mary Foster.  There is, today, an award given by the Women Lawyers
Association named for Foster.  Ann Arbor also had a second woman
practicing law:  Mary Collins Whiting.  I have found no other women
lawyers in Washtenaw County.

Some graduates did not practice law per se.  Grace Carleton used her
knowledge to be deputy treasurer of Chippewa County and then chief
mortgage clerk in a Detroit law firm.  She retired in Ann Arbor

There were about 200 women in 1900 who had been admitted to the bar
throughout the US.  ( in contrast to almost 5,000 physicians)  Some
practiced without a license which was legal but they could not go to
court.  The first woman lawyer was Arabella Mansfield in Iowa ( she
apprenticed vs university preparation).  Myra Bradwell of Chicago was
denied a license though she passed the bar exam with flying colors in
1869.  She sued and it went to the US Supreme Court which dropped the
ball in 1873 and said that each state could decide if women would be
admitted.

For more info:  Karen Morello's  book, The Invisible Bar, is very informative.

Hope this helps a little.  More later if you get me those names etc.
They may or may not have necrology files.  If they do, it is a simple
matter to see what they did with their education.

Susan