Early Lady Lawyers of California- Mary McHenry Keith by Zina Abbott

 

In earlier posts, I featured two of the first lady lawyers who were admitted to practice before the California Bar. The first was Clara Shortridge Foltz, and very soon afterward was Laura de Force Gordon. Both of these women, intent on expanding their knowledge of the law after already passing the bar, applied to the Hastings College of Law (Now the University of California). They were denied admission based on their gender. After filing a lawsuit, they won their case. Unfortunately, due to financial and other reasons, neither completed the course of study and graduated.

 

The first woman who attended and graduated from Hastings College of Law was Mary McHenry. Graduatating in 1882, Mary McHenry practiced law for only a few years, although she used her law degree throughout her life to advocate social justice issues, specifically woman suffrage, opposing white slavery and prostitution, and animal rights issues.

Mary McHenry

Mary McHenry Keith was born in San Francisco, California on November 20, 1855 to John McHenry (1809–1880) and Ellen Josephine Metcalfe McHenry (1827-1922). John McHenry was a Judge and Louisiana Supreme Court Justice who moved to California in 1850 and continued to work as a judge in San Francisco. Mary had three siblings, Elizabeth Harris McHenry Lamare (1850-1907), Emma McHenry Pond (1857-1934), and John McHenry (1858-1935). She attended San Francisco's Girl's High School before pursuing a college degree.

Mary's father was not supportive of women's work outside the home, but did not stop her from attending college. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1879 at the University of California in Berkeley. Thanks to the efforts of the above-mentioned lady lawyers to make it possible for women to attend law school about the time she finished her undergraduate degree, and without telling her father, she enrolled in Hastings.

1883 Portrait of Mary-William Keith

For a short time after graduating from law school, Mary worked as a lawyer specializing in probates. She gave up being a lawyer in 1883 when she married prominent landscape artist, William Keith. Mr. Keith died in 1911, and Mary did not remarry.

Mary McHenry Keith focused activist work after her marriage. Her work in this area started when she was still a student and promoted the dress reform movement, which drew attention to the ways in which women’s clothing restricted the abilities of women to comfortably and effectively engage in the full range of activities available to male classmates. As a as president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, she addressed the importance of women receiving an education.

By the early 1890s, Mary was a prominent lecturer and member of the Berkeley Political Equality Club, serving as its President beginning in 1902. With a membership of over 200, the Berkeley Political Equality Club was one of the largest suffrage organizations in California and throughout the West Coast of the US.

 

Mary Keith at 1911 Amendment 8 Campaign in San Francisco

 

Mary firmly believed that women should develop themselves to their full potential, and that they should fully participate in society. In 1895, she organized the Woman's Congress (held in Berkeley) at which time she met Susan B. Anthony and began a regular correspondence about suffrage and women's rights. After the dismissal of the campaign in 1896, Mary revamped and retargeted the movement; publicly speaking to the right and need for co-education, centralizing suffrage as a primary cause in women organizations across the state, and integrating modern devices, such as cars and telephones as a way to reach and democratize rural areas. her leadership in Northern California provided a key role in securing the passage of suffrage for California women in 1911.  

In 1912, Mary was elected president of California’s Equal Suffrage Association. In this role, she expanded her experience and suffrage support to other states, such work contributed to the 19th amendment's ratification in 1920. 

Mary Keith 1910

Mary was an advocate for animal rights. She saw connections between women's and animals rights, and her thoughts on animal rights are reported to have had a strong influence on John Muir. Her advocacy for animal rights led to her service to the Humane Society, the California Audubon Society, as an officer for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and as a trustee of the Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education.

As a donor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and William Keith’s widow, she also was recognized for her work cataloguing, preserving, and exhibiting his collected works.

Mary McHenry Keith lived until the age of ninety-one. She died in Berkeley, California, on October 13, 1947.

This includes my trio of blog posts about early California lady lawyers. I’ve been interested in women and the law in California for years. However, my research for my romance, A Lawyer for Linton inspired my learning more about these women who pioneered professional careers and held leadership positions advocating for a better, more equitable society.

 

 

You may find the book description and purchase link for A Lawyer for Linton by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

My latest book to be released tomorrow (preordered purchases will actually show up on most readers’ Kindles late tonight) is Lighthouse Escape. What a delight writing this romance turned out to be. I hope my readers will enjoy reading. You may find the book description and purchase link for this book by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McHenry_Keith

https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/saint-marys-college-museum-of-art/mary-mchenry-keith-suffrage

California’s Early Lady Lawyers-Laura de Force Gordon by Zina Abbott

 

Last month I blogged about California’s very first lady lawyer, Clara Shortridge Foltz. You may find that post by CLICKING HERE. Today, I wish to introduce you to Laura de Force Gordon, the second woman to pass the California State Bar and the second woman to pass the be able to argue before the Supreme Court. Those are but some of this woman’s accomplishments.

Laura de Force Gordon (August 17, 1838 – April 5, 1907) was a California lawyer, newspaper publisher, and a prominent suffragette. She was the first woman to run a daily newspaper in the United States (the Stockton Daily Leader, 1874), and the second female lawyer admitted to practice in California.

As an activist, Gordon, along with California’s first woman attorney, Clara Foltz, was a key proponent of the Woman’s Lawyer’s Bill, which allowed women to practice law in California. She also pushed for the inclusion of Article XX, Section 18, in the California Constitution that prohibited the state from barring women from practicing any "lawful business, avocation, or profession".

Laura de Force was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania to Abram de Force and Catherine Doolittle Allen. The family had nine children. Her father struggled with rheumatism, but the children (including at least two daughters) received education in the public schools.

After the death of one of the children, the family turned to Spiritualism in 1855. Starting at age fifteen, Laura toured the Northeast of the United States giving public speeches, including a speech in Boston at age eighteen. During one such event, she met a Scottish physician named Charles H. Gordon, and in 1862, they married. They gradually moved west. During the Civil War, they lived in New Orleans where he was posted. From there, they went to Nevada, and then, in 1870, to California.

In 1870, Laura she helped found the California Women’s Suffrage Society and gave more than 100 speeches on suffrage. She also worked for suffrage in Nevada, speaking throughout the state in the late 1860s and in front of the state legislature in 1871. One paper writing about her speaking at this time described her speaking as "like a stream of liquid fire".

        Gordon and Anthony escorted by Theo. Tilton to seats on Exposition Hall stage

Laura also traveled outside of the Southwest. She representing California at the 1872 National Woman Suffrage Association in New York City. At the 1872 Liberal Republican convention, alongside Susan B. Anthony, she asked the party to seat her as a representative from California. Although her request was responded to with laughter, she submitted a pro-suffrage resolution.

In 1873, Gordon became an editor and reporter for the Stockton Narrow Gauge. In 1874, she bought the Stockton Weekly Leader and converted into a daily newspaper. This made her the first female publisher of a paper in the United States, even though, by doing so, she recognized the difficulties for a woman running a newspaper, having “already experienced the pressure of the tide which a woman must work against, if she dare deviate from the old routine of dish-washing and cradle-rocking.”

Though the paper was successful, Gordon sold it in 1876 and began considering a more financially stable career in law. She did publish the Oakland Daily Democrat between 1876 and 1878 and she was a correspondent for the Sacramento Bee and other papers, with a press desk on the floor of the state Assembly. She also served as an organizer of the Pacific Coast Press Association.

Sometime before 1878, Laura divorced her husband on grounds of adultery. She later referred to herself frequently as a widow, rather than a divorcée, since widowhood was more socially acceptable.

After beginning her legal career in 1879, she continued her suffrage activism. She was elected president of the California State Suffrage Association from 1884–1894, and a paid speaker on behalf of the movement in the 1888 presidential election. In 1892, she spoke at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In January 1879, Laura Gordon and Clara Foltz were briefly admitted to the recently opened Hastings College of Law and paid the $10 tuition. However, on the third day of classes, they were asked to leave, in part because the school's Dean felt their "rustling skirts" bothered the male students. In February, the women filed and argued a case that persuaded the state's Supreme Court to overturn that decision. However, because of work, activism, and family obligations, neither Gordon nor Foltz were able to graduate. The first female graduate of Hastings was Mary McHenry Keith.

At that time, law school graduation was not necessary for bar admission, so Gordon studied on her own. On December 6, 1879, she was admitted to the State Bar of California, becoming the second female attorney in the state (after Clara Foltz). In 1880 she established her own firm in San Francisco, where she specialized in general and criminal law. Her work included successful defenses in several murder cases. She was also the first woman in California to argue a case to a jury. This work attracted national attention, particularly in the case of George Wheeler, where Gordon assisted the defense and Foltz the prosecution, leading the New York’s National Police Gazette to write that it was a case where "two females will be allowed to wag their tongues to their heart's content".

On February 3, 1883, Laura became the second woman to be admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, after Belva Lockwood. 

After beginning her legal career, Laura continued her suffrage activism. She was elected president of the California State Suffrage Association from 1884–1894. She was a paid speaker on behalf of the movement in the 1888 presidential election. 

Official portrait for Columbian Exposition

In 1892, she spoke at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago where she declared, “Woman is no longer content to remain a subject,” she said in the 1893 speech at a convention of women in Chicago.

Laura de Force Gordon retired from the legal profession in 1901. She spent her last years on her farm in Lodi, California. Her health deteriorated in 1906 after the premature death of her grandchild. She caught pneumonia in March 1907, and died in Lodi on April 5, 1907.

Gordon died about four years before women were granted the right to vote in California, and more than a decade before the 19th Amendment established that right for women across the United States. But she was always optimistic: “Woman suffrage is bound to come,” she wrote in 1896.

“There has never been a time when so many men and women took so deep an interest in the subject,” she wrote, “and I am happy in the thought that our day of political freedom is so near.”

 

I was prompted to write this series of posts about early California women attorneys as a result of my research for my novel, A Lawyer for Linton. The book description and purchase link for this sweet romance is available by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.berfrois.com/2013/08/jill-norgren-american-rebels-women-lawyers-nineteenth-century/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_de_Force_Gordon

California's First Lady Lawyer: Clara Shortridge Foltz by Zina Abbott

 

In 1878, Clara Shortridge Foltz began her quest to become California’s first woman lawyer. A mother of five small children abandoned by her husband, Foltz turned to the law “[n]ot from ambition and defiance of the norms of womanly conduct, but out of desperation,” in order to support her family. Although she turned to working as a lawyer to raise five children, mostly as a single mother, she encouraged women not to overlook their traditional domestic roles.

Clara Foltz was one of several intelligent women who understood the prejudices of the society in which she lived which relegated women to the home. However, she could not support herself and five children on the earnings of “traditionally” accepted female jobs like laundress, seamstress, or cook. She refused to bow to the detractors who discriminated against women joining any profession considered the domain of men.

Her name Clarissa Shortridge, she was born in Milton, Indiana to Talitha and Elias Willetts Shortridge, who was both a lawyer and preacher. Prior to the Civil War, the family moved to Mount Pleasant, Iowa. There, Clara attended a co-educational school (rare at the time). Her father often lamented that it was a shame she had been born a girl and not a boy, because she could have developed into a gifted lawyer.

In December 1864, at the age 15, she eloped with a farmer and Civil War veteran named Jeremiah D. Foltz. As children were born to them, he found it difficult to support his family. The Foltzes moved several times, first to Portland, Oregon, and second in 1872, to San Jose, California. During these times, she contributed articles to the New Northwest and the San Jose Mercury.

Around 1876, her husband abandoned Clara for another woman, leaving her with five children under the age of 11. She began studying law in the office of a local judge, in part through the support of local suffragette Sarah Knox-Goodrich. Starting in 1877, she also supported herself by giving public lectures on suffrage.

There were about fifty women attorneys throughout the United States. However, California prohibited women from practicing law due to the California's Code of Civil Procedure which prohibited women from joining the profession, expressly stating that only a "white male citizen" could apply to the bar. With the help of several male allies, suffragist campaigners, a supportive local press, and her mother's assistance with child care, Foltz successfully lobbied for a new bill, the Woman Lawyer's Act, that allowed women to take the bar.

Thanks to Foltz's commitment to her studies, legal training from her father and his partner C.C. Stephens and a local legal club where aspiring attorneys practiced arguing cases, Foltz passed the bar in 1878, just four months after the Woman Lawyer's Act was passed. This bill allowed admission to the bar of “any citizen or person.” The law was one of the earliest American statutes allowing women to practice law.

Clara became the first woman lawyer on the US West Coast. She practiced law in San Francisco. She sought courtroom work, but, at her core, she was a reformer. She believed that women attorneys “should work to improve the administration of justice.” 

Later that year, she wished to improve her knowledge and skills by attending law school. She and her ally, Laura DeForce Gordon, applied to Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, which was part of the University of California. They were denied admission based on their gender.

Hastings School of the Law

Drawing upon both the Woman Lawyer Bill and the soon-to-be-ratified equal opportunity in employment statement in the constitution, at the state Supreme Court, Foltz and Gordon argued successfully that the state-supported Hastings Law School should not deny admission to women on the grounds of their sex. They were able to argue that, if women could serve as lawyers, they must certainly be allowed to attend law school at the University of California, which was a coeducational school. Judge Morrison agreed, and in Foltz v. Hoge ruled that Foltz and Gordon should be admitted to Hastings.

Although Clara Foltz successfully obtained admission for all qualified women to Hastings, the work to win the case left her impoverished. She returned to her legal career instead of pursuing her dream of attending law school. In addition to San Francisco, she lived in New York for four years in an attempt to build a corporate law practice. She ended up in San Diego.

It was Clara Foltz’s belief that "Genius, talent and hard labor know no sex." She was responsible for a number of firsts:

 

 * She spearheaded legislation to allow women to become law school students, notaries public, and administrators of estates.

 * In 1880, Foltz became the first female clerk for the State’s Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.

 * The first woman appointed to the State Board of Corrections.

 * The first woman named director of a major bank.

 * The first female licensed Notary Public.

 * In 1890, she led a campaign for nationwide public defenders' offices—over two decades before California got its first.

 * In 1910, Foltz was appointed to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, becoming the first female deputy district attorney in the United States. 

 * In 1930, at the age of 81, she was the first woman to run for governor of California.

Clara Foltz’s other accomplishments included being active in the suffrage 

movement and authoring the Women's Vote Amendment for California in 1911. She also founded and published the San Diego Daily Bee, and New American Woman Magazine, for which she wrote a monthly column until her death.

Clara Foltz died of heart failure on Sept. 2, 1934, at the age of 85. She was at home in Los Angeles at the time.

Clara Foltz’s legacy continues to inspire women who pursue the legal profession. At the insistence of its women students, Hastings College of the Law granted Foltz a posthumous degree of Doctor of Laws in 1991. Also, the primary social space inside UC Hastings's McAllister Tower student housing complex was christened the Clara S. Foltz Lounge.

In 2002, the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles was renamed the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. 

 

Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, Los Angeles

 ~o0o~

In keeping with my interest in genealogy research, I have studied early California laws and some of the accomplishments of early women in this state. I was pleased that my preparation for my novel, A Lawyer for Linton, led me to learn more about the pioneering women in California’s legal system. To find the book description and purchase link, please CLICK HERE.

 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.calbarjournal.com/March2012/TopHeadlines/TH4.aspx

https://www.berfrois.com/2013/08/jill-norgren-american-rebels-women-lawyers-nineteenth-century/

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13863165/the-wests-first-lady-lawyer-opened-doors-for-women-in-law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Shortridge_Foltz