“Law offices, suffering for want of students to help, … and yet they would not let me in, because I was a woman.”

Lavinia Goodell, 1873

It is a common misconception that Belle Case LaFollette, wife of Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Fighting Bob LaFollette, was Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer. While Belle was the first woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law school in 1885, five years after Lavinia’s death, Lavinia became the state’s first woman attorney in 1874 after studying the law on her own for over two years and then passing an examination in the Rock County Circuit Court. Entering the profession without going to law school was quite common at the time. Many of Lavinia’s sisters in law followed the same path.

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Jan

2020

Spinsterhood: the fate of an unattractive woman or a radical act?

Have you seen the Little Women movie? The new ending would have incited Lavinia Goodell to dash off an op-ed for the Woman’s Journal.

Jo March negotiating with her editor in Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women — Jo March negotiating with her editor, Little Women (2019)

Greta Gerwig has Jo March telling an editor that her heroine was adamantly opposed marriage, so the novel would not end with her wedding either Laurie or Professor Bhaer. The editor shot back: “Who cares! Girls want to see women married, not consistent. If you end your delightful book with your heroine a spinster, no one will buy it. It won’t be worth printing.” For Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer, “them’s fightin’ words!”

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Nov

2019

“I am dying to see a sensible woman. And they don’t abound here.”

In June 1919, Wisconsin became the first state to ratify the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote. In celebration of this great achievement many have repeated an enchanting origin story of Wisconsin’s women’s suffrage movement published in The Milwaukee Journal on December 21, 1924:

Way down in the southwestern corner of Wisconsin, the little town of Richland Center has been glorified above all towns in the state in that it is the cradle of women’s suffrage in Wisconsin.

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Dec

2019

Preaching temperance on New Years?!

Preaching temperance on New Year’s Day?!

Lavinia, a temperance advocate, hailed from New York where the tradition was to hold an open house for family and friends on New Year’s Day. In 1870, she welcomed the New Year with the German family who had just tried to get her tipsy on Christmas. Four years later, she celebrated in Janesville, Wisconsin surrounded by kindred spirits. On both holidays she preached temperance to the revelers. Her letters describe the results of her efforts.

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Dec

2019

“The Gazette has a new notice of me, and I fear I am getting puffed up.”

–Lavinia Goodell, August 6, 1874

A huge thank you to Anna Marie Lux for writing and the Janesville Gazette for publishing an in-depth account of Lavinia’s digital biography and the research behind it. Lavinia would no doubt be very pleased to know that nearly 140 years after her death her hometown newspaper still finds her newsworthy. Read the article here.

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Nov

2019

Thanksgiving in jail

Lavinia Goodell’s Thanksgiving celebrations in the 1860s and 1870s bear at least some resemblance to today’s holiday festivities. The day often began with a religious service. Although Lavinia had a lifelong affiliation with the Congregational church, she liked to explore other houses of worship as well.

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Nov

2019

“Why this is an unexpected pleasure . . . I am ready to explode with fun!”

–Lavinia Goodell, September 24, 1874

Many, many thanks to the State Bar of Wisconsin. It has awarded Lavinia Goodell the Lifetime Legal Innovator award posthumously for opening the practice of law to women. Click here. The honor helps raise public awareness about Lavinia’s important contributions to history.

We think that Lavinia would be pleased. To her, the equality of women and men was “like an axiom which it were as idle to dispute as to undertake to controvert the multiplication table.” Click here. She would not have expected to receive the award in 2019–150 years after she was admitted to the Rock County Circuit Court because she thought that once a few women began practicing law, the prejudice against them would melt away quickly. In any case, she would be delighted to learn that opening the bar to women helped improve the hygiene of courtrooms across Wisconsin! In her September 4, 1875 Woman’s Journal article, “Shall Women Study Law?,” she wrote:

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