| Jessie Lafountain Bigwood was admitted
to the Vermont Bar on this day in 1902. She was Vermont’s
first woman lawyer.
At the banquet for the Vermont Bar Association’s annual meeting
the next year, a toast was made to Bigwood calling her “Our
Sister in the Law.”
When asked to speak she said “Woman is being emancipated;
she is no longer harnessed to a plow nor locked within four walls,
but can now be a companion in learning and culture to her father,
brothers and husband.”
It would be a decade before another woman would be admitted to
the Vermont Bar, and 18 years until women won the right to vote.
Historic image courtesy Vermont
Historical Society.
Historic maker is a Vermont Book Of Days photo.
Special thanks to the
Vermont Bar Association.
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