Raising the bar of equality within the Vermont Bar.
A woman joins the ranks of the legal profession.

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.

Image courtesy the Vermont Historical Society. Special thanks to the Vermont Bar Association.

October Archives | October 5