“Heard Dr. Whiting on the women’s temperance movement.”
Lavinia Goodell, April 26, 1874
Lavinia Goodell and her parents were members of the Congregational Church in Janesville, Wisconsin, and she had a cordial relationship with the church’s pastors. While she became close friends with Rev. T.P. Sawin, who was the same age as Lavinia and arrived in 1876, she was also very fond of Sawin’s predecessor, Dr. Lyman Whiting.
Dr. Lyman Whiting
In addition to his church obligations, Dr. Whiting and his wife actively supported Janesville’s temperance crusade. In late April 1874, Lavinia’s diary entry notes that she had gone to hear Dr. Whiting speak about temperance.
In the weeks leading up to Lavinia Goodell’s admission to practice law in Rock County, Wisconsin circuit court, she had begun to despair whether she would ever get the opportunity to take the bar examination. The lawyer who was supposed to move her admission seemed to be dragging his feet, and no one knew whether the judge would allow a woman to take the exam. (Read more about all that here.) In her efforts to get the chance to be examined, Lavinia mustered all the ammunition she could. Her June 3, 1874 diary entry noted that she first went to see a Mrs. Newman (according to the 1876 Janesville city directory, Mrs. Newman was possibly a Janesville dentist’s wife) and then wrote to the Milwaukee County circuit court clerk to “inquire about Lily Peckham,” a young woman who, according to some accounts, had briefly practiced law in Milwaukee prior to dying in 1871 at age 28.
Elizabeth (Lily) Peckham’s grave, Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
We do not have the Milwaukee clerk’s response, but there is no record that Lily Peckham ever asked the Milwaukee court to admit her to practice law. In fact, finding any information about Peckham is a challenge. The problem starts with her name. While her birth name was Elizabeth, contemporary sources alternately referred to her as Lily, Lilly, Lillie, Lila, Lilia, and Lillian. Through a great deal of persistence and a little luck (a helpful hint to all historical researchers: always try multiple spellings of names), we have been able to piece together parts of Peckham’s biography. She was clearly an intelligent and able young woman who accomplished a great deal in her short life – although it is unclear whether she ever practiced law.
“The Old Maids’ Convention, under the title of Woman’s Rights, met at Syracuse yesterday.”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 16, 1855
Lavinia Goodell worked tirelessly for women’s rights in the 1870s, and she encountered a fair amount of resistance to her views from both men and women. But even though Lavinia struggled to win people over to her cause, societal attitudes toward women’s roles had already evolved considerably from the 1850s when Lucy Stone, one of Lavinia’s mentors, began advocating for equal rights for women.
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone was born in Massachusetts in 1818. In 1850, she helped organize multiple women’s rights conventions. A convention held in Salem, Ohio in April declared: “The laws should not make a woman a mere prisoner on the bounty of her husband, thus enslaving her will, and degrading her to a condition of absolute dependence.”
The Liberator, a publication edited by William Lloyd Garrison, announced a convention to be held in Worcester, Massachusetts in October 1850 and said, “The signs are encouraging; the time is opportune.” The announcement continued:
Woman has been condemned, from her greater delicacy of physical organization, to inferiority of intellectual and moral culture, and to the forfeiture of great social, civil and religious privileges…. But, by the inspiration of the Almighty, the beneficent spirit of reform is roused to the redress of those wrongs.
“To stifle the longings of an immortal soul to follow any useful calling in this life is a departure from the order of nature.”
Attorney Ada M. Bittenbender, writing about Lavinia Goodell
In 1891, eleven years after Lavinia Goodell’s death, Henry Holt published a book titled Woman’s Work in America.
Edited by Annie Nathan Meyer, founder of Barnard College, New York’s first liberal arts college for women, the book contained chapters on women in various professions. In the introduction, Julia Ward Howe (a writer, abolitionist, and suffragist best known for writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic) wrote, “The theory that women should not be workers is a corruption of the old aristocratic system.” Ms. Howe went to note that a speaker at a Massachusetts legislative hearing had recently asked why women did not enter the professions. Ms. Howe said, “One might ask how he could escape knowing that in all of these fields … women are doing laborious work and with excellent results?”
Lavinia Goodell was featured prominently in Chapter nine of the book, “Women in Law.” The chapter was written by Ada M. Bittenbender, the first woman admitted to practice before the Nebraska Supreme Court and the third woman admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.
Ada Bittenbender
Ms. Bittenbender recounted Lavinia’s battle to be admitted to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and quoted at length Chief Justice Ryan’s opinion denying her petition. Ms. Bittenbender predicted that Ryan’s opinion “will be read with interest and remain of historic value as showing the fossilized misconceptions woman combated with in attaining the generally acceptable position in the legal profession in this country which she now holds.”
“Lavinia Goodell is a shrewd, quick-witted girl, fond of humor, studious and argumentative.”
Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1879
Lavinia Goodell received a fair amount of national media attention during the years she practiced law in Wisconsin. While precise numbers are virtually impossible to come by, it is fair to say that when Lavinia was admitted to practice law in the summer of 1874 there were fewer than a dozen women lawyers in the entire country. The novelty of her admission made her newsworthy, and her epic battle with Chief Justice Ryan in which she sought to be admitted to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court generated many columns of ink.
The March 1879 issue of Lippincott’s Magazine contained a profile of Lavinia written by someone identified only by the initials M.W.P.
The identity of the author is unknown, but he or she evidently knew Lavinia during the time she worked at Harper’s Bazar (1867 to 1871). The piece gave one of the most detailed descriptions of Lavinia’s appearance and personality:
When I first knew Miss Goodell, she was employed in a literary way in the office of Harper’s Bazar – a shrewd, quick-witted girl, fond of humor, studious and argumentative. In person she was of medium height, but looking tall from her slender, erect figure, blue-eyed, and with light brown curling hair.
With the exception of 1878, Lavinia Goodell made daily entries in a diary from 1873 until shortly before she died in 1880. The small leather bound volumes are part of the William Goodell family papers housed in the special collections and archives at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. (Lavinia’s beloved eldest nephew, William Goodell Frost, was the long time president of Berea College.)
One of Lavinia Goodell’s diaries
The diaries and vast cache of family correspondence provide a firsthand view of Lavinia’s life. The amount of primary source material written by Lavinia herself is truly astounding and allows us to know what she was doing and thinking on an almost daily basis.
1878 had been a difficult year for Lavinia. Both of her parents died, and she spent months in the east undergoing and then recovering from major surgery to remove an ovarian tumor. No diary survives from this annus horribilis, but Lavinia took up her pen again in 1879.
During the years she practiced law in Janesville, Wisconsin, Lavinia Goodell was appointed to represent a number of criminal defendants. (Read more about her experience here.) She also started a jail school, believing that if the men were educated they had a much better chance of becoming productive members of society after their release.
Lavinia took a personal interest in the inmates and formed close relationships with some of them. She encouraged them to write to her. Some called her “Mother” and gave her photographs of themselves. Judging by the number of times she mentioned them and corresponded with them, two of her favorites were named Sutton and Sullivan. Both men were ultimately sent to the state prison in Waupun, Wisconsin. The prison had opened in the 1850s.
Waupun State prison, c. 1870s
Lavinia visited Waupun to see her “boys” in March of 1879. According to her diary, she “Brought presents for the boys” and “had good talks” with Sutton, Sullivan, and others the night of her arrival.
During the eight years that Lavinia Goodell lived in Janesville, Wisconsin, in addition to first studying and then practicing law, she was a member of the Congregational Church, actively promoted temperance, and worked to establish a free reading room in the city. Through her participation in these activities she met many prominent Janesville citizens with common interests. One of them was F. S. Eldred.
Frederick Starr Eldred was born in New York State in 1821. He came to Wisconsin in 1842 and moved to Janesville in 1856. In his early years in the city he engaged in the lumber business, after which he went into the grocery trade.
March 9, 1872 Janesville Gazette
Eldred was one of the organizers of the Janesville Cotton Manufacturing Company. He served as an alderman and was one of the incorporators of the First National bank and its first vice-president. He was an active supporter of the temperance cause. In 1873, Eldred’s wife joined Lavinia Goodell and other local women in marching to city hall to protest the granting of additional liquor licenses.
