Few People Know The First Woman To Graduate From Law School In The United States Was An Illinoisan
By Elizabeth Crozier|Published May 25, 2020
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Elizabeth Crozier
Author
An Illinois transplant who grew up and went to school in Indiana for 22 years, Elizabeth holds a BFA in creative writing and has enjoyed traveling across the country and parts of Europe. She has visited half of the states, as well as parts of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, and regularly travels home to the Hoosier State to see friends and family. With more than five years of writing experience, Elizabeth’s articles have been featured on several websites, and her poetry and short stories have been published in multiple literary journals.
The first woman law student in the United States graduated from a school in Chicago, Illinois. The story of this woman’s life is unique and interesting, and it deserves to be told. Check it out:
Ada Kepley was born Ada Harriet Miser on February 11, 1847 in Somerset, Ohio. After her family moved to St. Louis, she met and married Henry B. Kepley who had a law practice in Effingham, Illinois.
Henry encouraged his wife to attend school at the Old University of Chicago's law department, which is today known as Northwestern. She graduated in 1870 as the first woman law student to graduate in the United States.
Because Ada was a woman, she was not allowed entrance to the bar which would grant her the right to actually join or start a practice. Her husband drafted a law banning this sort of sexual discrimination and it was signed into law in 1872.
Ada Kepley did not apply for her law license until 1881. She is known for paving the way for many other female lawyers in early history, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was one of only nine women to graduate out of a class of 500 Harvard law students in the 1950s.
In addition to inspiring women through her scholarship, Kepley has motivated people through her activism. She was a passionate crusader for the women's suffrage movement and was associated with Frances Willard and Susan B. Anthony.
Kepley's focus throughout her time with the women's suffrage movement was on temperance, which eventually led to prohibition. She founded an organization that taught youth about the dangers of alcohol and published a paper that criticized saloons and those who frequented them.
After the death of her husband, Kepley spent her final years on a farm in Effingham where she wrote her autobiography. Soon after, she fell into poverty and lost the farm. Forced to move into a small home, she ended up a charity case in the hospital where she died in June 1925.
