(ISSN 0043-6534) WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY The State Historical Society of Wisconsin • Vol. 74, No. 4 • Summer, 1991 imm Ii •v-. THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN H. NICHOLAS MULLER III, Director Officers GEORGE H. MILLER, President H. NICHOLAS MULLER III, Secretary GERALD D, VISTE, Treasurer JANE BERNHARDT, Second Vice-President FANNIE HICKLIN, First Vice-President THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is both a state agency and a private membership organization. Founded in 1846—two years before statehood—and chartered in 1853, it is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous public funding. By statute, it is charged with collecting, advancing, and dissemi­ nating knowledge of Wisconsin and of the trans-Allegheny West. The Society serves as the archive of the State of Wisconsin; it collects all manner of books, periodicals, maps, manuscripts, relics, newspapers, and aural and graphic materials as they relate to North America; it maintains a museum, library, and research facility in Madison as well as a statewide system of historic sites, school services, area research centers, and affiliated local societies; it administers a broad program of historic preservation; and publishes a wide variety of historical materials, both scholarly and popular. MEMBERSHIP in the Society is open to the public. Individual membership (one person) is $25. Senior Citizen Individual membership is $20. Family membership is $30. Senior Citizen Family membership is $25. Supporting membership is $100. Sustaining membership is $250. A Patron contributes $500 or more. THE SOCIETY is governed by a Board of Curators which includes twenty-four elected members, the Governor or designee, three appointees of the Governor, a legislator from the majority and minority from each house, and ex officio, the President of the University of Wisconsin System, the President of the Friends of the State Historical Society, the President of the Wisconsin History Foundation, Inc., and the President of the Administrative Committee of the Wisconsin Council for Local History. A complete listing of the Curators appears inside the back cover. The Society is headquartered at 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488, at the juncture of State and Park streets on the University of Wisconsin campus. The State Historical Museum is located at 30 North Carroll Street. A partial listing of phone numbers (Area Code 608) follows: General Administration 262-3266 Library circulation desk 262-3421 Affiliated local societies 262-2316 Maps 262-5867 Archives reading room 262-33,38 Membership 262-9613 Contribution of manuscript materials 262-3248 Microforms reading room 262-9621 Editorial offices 262-9603 Museum tours 262-7700 Film collections 262-058.5 Newspaper reference 262-9584 Genealogical and general reference inquiries .. 262-9590 Picture and sound collections 262-9581 Government publications and reference 262-2781 Public information office 262-9606 Historic preservation 262-1339 Sales desk 262-8000 Historic sites 262-9606 School services 262-7539 Hours of operation 262-8060 Speakers bureau 262-9606 ON THE COVER: The law office of Lavinia Goodell, first woman admitted to the practice of law in Wisconsin, re-created as one of the exhibition rooms prepared by the Committee of Wisconsin Women for the Women's Building, Wisconsin Centennial Exposition, State Fair Park, Milwaukee, 1948. An article on her struggle to become a lawyer begins on page 243. [WHi(X3)28999] Volume 74, Number 4 / Summer, 1991 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 State Street, Madison, Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin 53706-1488, First Woman Lawyer in Wisconsin 243 Distributed to members as part Catherine B. Cleary of their dues. (Individual membership, $25; senior citizen individual, $20; family, $30; Hannah's Letters: senior citizen family, $25; supporting, $100; sustaining, The Story of a Wisconsin Pioneer Family, $250; patron, $500 or more.) 1856-1864: Part II 272 Single numbers from Volume 57 Edited by Elizabeth Krynski and Kimberly Little forward are $5 plus postage. Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, James J. Blaisdell, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106; reprints Wisconsin's Eclectic Environmentalist 297 of Volumes 1 through 20 and Nelson Van Valen most issues of Volumes 21 through 56 are available from Kraus Reprint Company, Route 100, Millwood, New York 10546, Accessions 312 Communications should be addressed to the editor. The Wisconsin History Checklist 315 Society does not assume responsibility for statements Contributors 318 made by contributors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin, POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Wisconsin Magazine of History, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488. Copyright © 1991 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, The Wisconsin Magazine of History is indexed annually by the editors; cumulative indexes are assembled decennially. In addition, articles are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts, Index to Literature on the American Indian, and the Combined Retrospective Index to Journals in Editor History, 1838-1974. PAUL H. HASS Associate Editors Photographs identified with WHi negative numbers are from the WILLIAM C, MARTEN Historical Society's collections. JOHN O. HOLZHUETER Lavinia Goodell of Janesville, the first woman admitted to the practice of law in Wisconsin. Photo courtesy the author. 242 Lavinia Goodell, First Woman Lawyer in Wisconsin By Catherine B. Cleary AVINIA Goodell of Janesville, Wis­ the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the basis of L consin, was one of the small the new law. The determination, dignity, and number of women in the Middle West who ability with which she pursued her goal and the opened the legal profession in the United support she received from unexpected sources States to women shortly after the Civil War. are a bright chapter in Wisconsin history.' Most of these women—in Iowa, Missouri, Mich­ Rhoda Lavinia Goodell was born in Utica, igan, Ohio, and Indiana—were admitted by the courts in their states without question. Only in Wisconsin and Illinois did the state supreme '/n the Matter of the Motion to admit Miss Lavinia Goodell court refuse to admit a woman. The opinion to the Bar of this Court, 39 Wis. 232, 245 (1875); Application Chief Justice Fdward G. Ryan wrote for the of Miss Goodell, 48 Wis, 693 (1879); James Willard Hurst, Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1876, denying The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers (Boston, Goodell's first petition for admission to its bar, 1950), 255. Arabella Babb Mansfield was admitted to the bar in Iowa in 1869, Lemma Barkaloo in Missouri in 1870, is powerful evidence of the obstacles women Sarah Kilgore in Michigan in 1871, Nettie Cronise Lutes faced—not the law, because that could be in Ohio in 1873, and Elizabeth F^aglesfield in a lower court changed—but the widespread belief in "sepa­ in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1875. Several years later, in rate spheres" for men and women and a sense 1877, it took a statute to open the Minnesota bar to of outrage on the part of men like Ryan that women. The Iowa statute made "white males" eligible, and the Indiana statute referred to "voters," Even so, both any woman would dare to seek entrance into courts admitted women. The profession was opened to this masculine domain. Such efforts were, he women in a few other isolated jurisdictions in this early said, "a departure from the order of nature" period: Phoebe Couzins (Couzens) and Georgia Snow, Ter­ and "treason against it." But Lavinia Goodell, ritory of Utah, 1872; Charlotte E. Ray, District of Colum­ already admitted to the bar in Rock County, bia, 1872 (first black woman admitted); Clara H. Nash, Maine, 1872. Myra Bradwcll's petition for admission to the persuaded the Wisconsin legislature to remove Illinois bar was denied in 1869. In re Bradwell, 55 III. Sup, the barrier to women the supreme court had Ct, 535 (1870) affirmed 21 Law. Ed, 442 (1873) [or see erected; and, three and a half years after her 83 U,S. (16 Wall,) 130]. Alia Hulctt was the first woman first petition, she was admitted to the bar of admitted in Illinois, in 1873, after the Illinois legislature passed a statute making it possible, FUlen A, Martin, "Ad­ mission of Women to the Bar," in The Chicago Law Times, 1:76 (1886); Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America, 1638 to the Present (Boston, EDITORS' NOTE: The editors wish to express their appre­ 1988). For a discussion of rulings under different state ciation to Denise Rail of the Madison Academic Computing statutes, including cases in the 1880's denying women ad­ Center, University of Wisconsin, for her assistance in trans­ mission to the bar in Massachusetts and New York, see ferring the manuscript from one magnetic medium to an­ "NOTE: The right of women to practice law," 21 Lawyers' other. Reports, Annotated 701 (1893). 243 Copyright © !991 by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin Alt rights of reproduction in any form reserved. WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, I99I New York, on May 2, 1839, the third daughter in the heart of the "burned-over district" in of William and Clarissa Goodell. The oldest western New York, which got its name from daughter had died in infancy. The middle the evangelical religion which had reached its daughter Maria, twelve years older than Lavi­ peak between 1825 and 1835. For the next nia, helped bring her up and was close to her fifteen years this movement continued to in­ as long as they both lived. It was Maria, after fluence not only churches but also the abolition she had married and moved away, in whom and temperance movements, and William Lavinia confided through long letters. It was Goodell was deeply involved in these devel­ Maria who saved the family papers and who opments.* wrote the first biography of Lavinia.^ As a child Lavinia's health was delicate, and William Goodell was undoubtedly the great­ she attended school only spasmodically.