Victoria Conkling-Whitney (1859 - January 25, 1926) was the first woman attorney to practice before the St. Louis Court of Appeals. She said she studied law in self-defense, and urged all women to devote some time to this helpful branch of education. She organized the Woman's State Bar Association, when she was elected president. It was the first organization of its kind in the West, and the object was educational and for mutual improvement in the profession.
Victoria Geraldine Conkling was born in 1859 near Columbus, Ohio. Received her earliest education in the university town of Westerville, Ohio. On the death of her father, David Conkling, an attorney, her mother, Cynthia A. Hill, also an attorney, brought her family to Missouri, where a brother had preceded them, and they made Missouri their home. Both her parents were of Colonial ancestry. She was of the seventh generation, on her mother's side, from John Alden and Priscilla De Molineux, who, with her father, mother and brother, all French Huguenots, came to New England with others of that immortal band, in the Mayflower, in 1620. William De Molineux was the tenth, and John Alden the seventh signer of the "Mayflower Compact," the first declaration of equal rights ever promulgated. The Conklings came to New England in 1638. That they and their descendants were loyal to the principle of freedom is shown by the fact that there were 145 stalwart men enrolled in the army and navy of the Revolutionary War. On her mother's side she numbers both the Adams, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bryant, Major-General John Mason, for thirty years Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial Armies, and hero of the Pequot War. Major Daniel Mason also. Whitney was eligible to each and every Colonial and Revolutionary Society in the United States. [1]
Victoria Conkling-Whitney's ancestry included a distinguished line of lawyers and statesmen on both sides, and therefore her love for law and politics was an inherited one. She was first admitted to practice in Kingman, Kansas. The examining board consisted of three lawyers appointed by the Judge of the Circuit Court; when it was announced in court that the report was ready to be made, the Judge suspended all proceedings, the chairman commending her examination to the women of Kansas as worthy of their emulation. After coming to St. Louis, Whitney went before the St. Louis Court of Appeals, and was the first woman ever admitted before it. Later the Supreme Court of her adopted State convened in special session to admit her to practice, adjourning immediately thereafter, when the entire bench with the Chief Justice offered congratulations. She was later, while on a business journey to Washington, introduced by the Hon. Belva Ann Lockwood to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and they also convened in special session to admit her to practice. After this she went before the Supreme Court of New York, being presented by Gen. Roger Atkinson Pryor, himself a foremost member of the Supreme Judiciary. Her papers were prepared, and she took the oath the same day — a distinction not often conferred on applicants. [1]
Having had some litigation in the courts over private property and finding that her ignorance of the law was likely to cause her to lose it, Victoria Conkling-Whitney took up the study and worked eight and ten hours a day until she passed the examination. Whitney said law was a difficult study; yet women would be successful because they were painstaking and conscientious and willing to put in unflinching application to study. Her opinion was that women's clubs and organizations would be spending their time more practically and beneficially by studying law instead of taking delicatessen doses of Browning and Mendelssohn. Women left with estates to manage or those owning property were entirely at the mercy of their attorneys. Whitney believed that law ought to be a part of the curriculum of every school as much as mathematics and literature. It would make woman less dependent and gave her self-confidence. [1]
Whitney engaged in practice with her brother. Judge Conkling, in Missouri, but before relocating in St. Louis went to Washington and was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Department of the Interior. [1]
One of her experiences was as a teacher in the Boonville public schools, and for a year a member of the faculty of the State University, Department School of Mines, in Rolla, Missouri. Her role was Assistant in Preparatory Department, and Recording Secretary. It was at this time she met her future husband, Professor Geordie Z. Whitney, Librarian. [1]
Whitney believed in equal Suffrage, and as president of the regular Missouri Equal Suffrage Association, conducted four campaigns at Jefferson City, Missouri, for a constitutional amendment giving the women citizens of Missouri the right of franchise, herself drafting the amendinent which went unanimously to engrossment, but expired in the Senate with six hundred other bills at the close of the session. Whitney, with the chairman of the committee, had the honor of being invited to address the House of Representatives in Committee of the Whole, an honor which had never been conferred on any woman before save Dorothy Dix. [1]
In 1900, in New York City, at a meeting of leading and representative women held at the Park Avenue Hotel, Whitney' helped to organize the National Legislative League, of which she was elected a member of the executive committee. To Lillie Devereux Blake, as leader, much credit is due for the passage of the many laws for the benefit of women now on the statute books of that state. The Missouri State Suffrage Association became an auxiliary to the National Legislative League in its organization. It was identical with and the successor to the first Equal Suffrage Association formed by Virginia Minor in 1864, including in its membership such names as James Yeatman, Benjamin Gratz Brown, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Mrs. Beverly Allen, Rev. W. W. Boyd, Rev. John Snyder, Sophronia Wilson Wagoner, and was the first organization to propose a movement to place women as members of the St. Louis School Board. During the Cuban War the association took an active part in the work for the soldiers. The association also sent delegates — Dr. H. T. Wilcox and Rev. John Snyder — to the first meeting held to organize the Good Roads Movement that grew into national importance. [1]
Whitney's practice was in the civil courts. For a number of years she had in view the formation of a woman's bar association, and on July 14, 1912, organized the Woman's State Bar Association, when she was elected president. The meetings were held at the Planters Hotel. It was the first organization of its kind in the West, and the object was educational and for mutual improvement in the profession. An annual banquet was held, and eminent jurists were from time to time invited to give addresses before it. Among the laws it favored is to appoint a duly qualified woman lawyer for Judge of the Juvenile Court; in a strong measure it also favored prison reforms. Among its honorary members were Hon. Belva Lockwood, author of the bill admitting women to practice in the United States Supreme Court; Mrs. Marilla Ricker, who had an immense practice in Washington, and was the only living woman at the time who ever sat on the woolsack beside the Lord Chief Justice of England; Clara Shortridge Foltz, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney of Los Angeles, and Phoebe Couzins. Whitney was the vice-president of the Missouri International Peace Society, organized by the Princess Wizniewski (nee Hugo) and the Baroness Von Suttner. [1]
On April 14, 1886, Victoria Conkling married Geordie Z. Whitney (1855-1889), Professor of Mathematics and Secretary of the Faculty at University of Missouri School of Mines.
She died on January 25, 1926, in New York.
Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood was an American lawyer, politician, educator, and author who was active in the women's rights and women's suffrage movements. She was one of the first women lawyers in the United States, and in 1879 she became the first woman to be admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court. Lockwood ran for president in 1884 and 1888 on the ticket of the National Equal Rights Party and was the first woman to appear on official ballots. While Victoria Woodhull is commonly cited as the first woman to run for president, she was not old enough to run, unlike Lockwood.
Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid. The Supreme Court upheld state court decisions in Missouri, which had refused to register a woman as a lawful voter because that state's laws allowed only men to vote.
The number of women in the United States judiciary has increased as more women have entered law school, but women still face significant barriers in pursuing legal careers.
Myra Colby Bradwell was an American publisher and political activist. She attempted in 1869 to become the first woman to be admitted to the Illinois bar to practice law, but was denied admission by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1870 and the United States Supreme Court in 1873, in rulings upholding a separate women's sphere. Bradwell had founded and published Chicago Legal News from 1868, reporting on the law and continued that work. Meanwhile, influenced by her case, in 1872 the Illinois legislature passed a state law prohibiting gender discrimination in admission to any occupation or profession.
Marietta L. B. Stow was an American politician and women's rights activist. Throughout her career in law and politics, Stow advocated for women's suffrage, access to political office, and probate law reform.
Ella Knowles Haskell was an American lawyer, suffragist, and politician. Born in New Hampshire, she moved to Montana to improve her health following a bout of tuberculosis and there became the first woman to be licensed as a lawyer, the first female notary public, the first woman to run for Montana State Attorney General, and the 26th woman to be admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court. She served as the President of the Montana Equal Suffrage Association and was widely known in Montana for her advancement of the suffrage movement, political feminism and social equity.
Margaret Bush Wilson was an American lawyer and activist. Wilson broke many barriers as an African-American woman throughout her professional career.
Virginia Louisa Minor was an American women's suffrage activist. She is best remembered as the plaintiff in Minor v. Happersett, an 1875 United States Supreme Court case in which Minor unsuccessfully argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote.
Mary Hall was the first female lawyer in Connecticut, and also a poet, a suffragist, and a philanthropist. In 1882, the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors' decision to allow Hall to be admitted to the Connecticut Bar was the first judicial decision in the nation to hold that women were permitted to practice law.
Sarah Herring Sorin was Arizona's first woman attorney and the first woman to try a case in front of the United States Supreme Court unassisted by a male attorney. Sorin practiced law with her father William Herring in the firm "Herring & Sorin" initially in Tombstone, Arizona, and later in Tucson. After her father's death, Sorin moved to Globe, Arizona, where she became the attorney for the Old Dominion Copper Company and United Globe Mines. Sarah Sorin is a member of the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.(See photo of Sarah Herring Sorin in the Arizona Library Archives.) She is also included in Stanford Law School's Women's Legal History Biography Project.
Charlotte Anita Whitney, best known as "Anita Whitney", was an American women's rights activist, political activist, suffragist, and early Communist Labor Party of America and Communist Party USA organizer in California.
Phoebe Wilson Couzins was one of the first female lawyers in the United States. She was the second woman to serve as a licensed attorney in Missouri and the third or fourth to be a licensed attorney in the United States. She was the first woman admitted to the Missouri and Utah bars, and was also admitted to the Kansas and Dakota Territory bars. She was the first female appointed to the U.S. Marshal service. After her career in law she played an active part in the Suffrage movement.
The St. Louis Equal Suffrage League was formed in 1910 in St. Louis, Missouri with the aim of "bring[ing] together men and women who are willing to consider the question of Equal Suffrage and by earnest co-operation to secure its establishment."
Amabel Anderson Arnold LL.M. was an American lawyer and law professor who organized the Woman's State Bar Association of Missouri, the first association of women lawyers in the world.
Martha Helen Strickland Clark was an American lawyer who was the first woman to practice law in Detroit, and the first woman to argue before the Michigan Supreme Court.
Antoinette Dakin Leach was an American lawyer and a women's rights pioneer who was an active organizer on behalf of women's suffrage in Indiana. When the Greene-Sullivan Circuit Court denied Leach's petition for admission to the bar in 1893, her successful appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court, In re Petition of Leach, broke the gender barrier for admission to the bar in Indiana, securing the right for women to practice law in the state. The landmark decision, a progressive one for the time, also set a precedent that was used in 1897 as a test case to give Indiana women the right to vote, although the voting rights challenge in Gougar v Timberlake was unsuccessful. Leach was also an active politician and a supporter of women's suffrage who favored a constitutional amendment to secure women's right to vote.
Henrietta Haynie Maddox was a vocalist, lawyer and suffragist. Maddox became the first woman in Maryland licensed to practice law in 1902. She fought for the rights of women to take the bar exam and practice law in the state of Maryland. She was a successful vocalist who studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music before starting a second career as an attorney. She was the co-founder of the Maryland Woman Suffrage Association in 1894 and campaigned for equal pay for equal work. Maddox wrote the first Maryland suffrage bill introduced to the General Assembly on February 23, 1910.
This is a timeline of women's suffrage in Missouri. Women's suffrage in Missouri started in earnest after the Civil War. In 1867, one of the first women's suffrage groups in the U.S. was formed, called the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri. Suffragists in Missouri held conventions, lobbied the Missouri General Assembly and challenged the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). The case that went to SCOTUS in 1874, Minor v. Happersett was not ruled in the suffragists' favor. Instead of challenging the courts for suffrage, Missouri suffragists continued to lobby for changes in legislation. In April 1919, they gained the right to vote in presidential elections. On July 3, 1919, Missouri becomes the eleventh state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.
Women's suffrage in Missouri became more active as a movement after the Civil War. There were significant developments in the St. Louis area, though groups and organized activity took place throughout the state of Missouri. An early suffrage group, the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri, was formed in 1867, attracting the attention of Susan B. Anthony and leading to news items around the state. This group, the first of its kind, lobbied the Missouri General Assembly for women's suffrage and established conventions. In the early 1870s, many women voted or registered to vote as an act of civil disobedience. The suffragist Virginia Minor was one of these women when she tried to register to vote on October 15, 1872. She and her husband, Francis Minor, sued, leading to a Supreme Court case that asserted the Fourteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote. The case, Minor v. Happersett, was decided against the Minors and led suffragists in the country to pursue legislative means to grant women suffrage.
