Belle A. Mansfield

I had not known of this woman until I received the following e-mail from Tom Dean:

For your women's series this month have you considered Belle Mansfield?
She was the first female attorney in the US and graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College!

I had not ever heard of her. In fact I'll bet most of you have never heard of her. I found this on a timeline

1869 Belle A. Mansfield becomes the first attorney to join the licensed bar in the United States.

I found an article on-line about her by Teresa Federer. Usually I steal it by copy and paste but you are just going to have to go here to read it.

The following is from Essential Estrogen.

Mansfield passed the bar exam on June 15, 1869 to become the first woman licensed to practice law in the United States. That however, is only one chapter of her story.

She was born in Sperry (Des Moines County) and graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College in 1866. She taught briefly at Simpson College in Indianola and then began studying law with her brother in the Ambler Law Office in Mount Pleasant. In June of 1968 she married John Mansfield, a professor of science at Iowa Wesleyan.

In June of the following year, she was admitted to the bar. The Henry County attorneys who examined her wrote, "Your committee take unusual pleasure in recommending the admission of Mrs. Mansfield, not only because she is the first lady that has thus applied for this authority, in the State, but because in her examination she has given the very best rebuke possible to the imputation that ladies cannot qualify themselves for the practice of law.”

Unfortunately, she never practiced law in the traditional sense. It is likely that she was too involved with women’s issues at the time. Not only was she the first woman admitted to the bar, but she was a strong advocate for women’s voting rights. In l871 she served as a delegate to the 2nd Iowa Woman Suffrage Convention in Des Moines. Also in the early 1870s she traveled extensively in Europe observing the courts of London and studying law in France.

In the late 1880s when her husband accepted a position at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana she served as professor and dean, but returned often to Iowa Wesleyan to teach and lecture during the fall semesters. In the summer of l893 she addressed the National League of Women Lawyers at the Chicago World’s Fair, where she was officially acknowledged as the first woman to be admitted to the bar in the U.S. She was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in l980.

She was inducted into the Iowa Woman's Hall of Fame in 1980.

I don't know many women lawyers but I know that their heritage was begun with this pioneering woman. One woman lawyer that I know is Jennifer S. so I will dedicate this Blog post to her (even though I doubt that she has time to read my blog.)

Addendum: Download a brochure telling how to donate to the Mansfield Memorial here.