“I am studying law.”

Lavinia Goodell, March 7, 1872

After moving to Janesville in the fall of 1871 to take care of her aging parents, Lavinia Goodell spent the first few months organizing the household and settling into her new home, but by the start of the new year, she was ready for new challenges. In early March she wrote to her cousin, Sarah Thomas:

Since you have told me so much – I will tell you what I am doing. I am studying law. Have been at it about six weeks. Like it ever so much. Have been thro’ “Warren’s Law Studies” and two vols. of Blackstone, and am in the third. I am studying with Mr. Jackson, who is one of the pillars of the Congregational Church, and a good woman’s rights man.

The “Mr. Jackson” Lavinia referred to was A.A. Jackson.

Jackson was born in Oneida County, New York in 1831 and moved to Janesville in 1855. Jackson practiced law in partnership with a number of other attorneys – and in August of 1872 formed a partnership with Pliny Norcross, who would play an important role in Lavinia’s legal career – but when he took Lavinia on as a law student he was a sole practitioner. As he did throughout her life, Lavinia’s father, William Goodell, played an important role in helping her undertake her new studies. Lavinia told her cousin that, “My parents are satisfied with the idea (indeed, Father arranged the business for me), and nobody seems shocked.”

In describing her new routine to her cousin, Lavinia showed her strong work ethic and tenacity and had already set a goal of becoming Wisconsin’s first female lawyer.

I study at home and go to the office occasionally to get information and recite. all the lawyers I have met seem very friendly and favorable. I shant say much about this at present because something might occur to derange my plans, and then people would think I had commenced but was too lazy or fickle to go thro’ and so it would give “the enemy cause to blaspheme.” I don’t like to tell what great things I am going to do, but wait and see whether I can do them. I think the information I shall acquire will always be of great use to me, even if I never should practice. If I succeed in getting creditably thro’ my studies, tho’, I think I shall try to get admitted to the Bar, if only for the precedent. (How would it look: Lavinia Goodell, Counsellor at Law?)

Anyway, I enjoy studying and I feel as if I was improving my time, and it is a good mental discipline. I try to spend 5 or 6 hours a day in study. I get to studying about 9 A.M. and get thro’ by 3 or 4 P.M., only stopping for dinner, dressing & occasional domestic duties. When interrupted try to make up in the evening. I may spend more time in the office by and by. I do not pay any tuition but expect to do enough work for Mr. Jackson to recompense him. I thought if I didn’t do something with my time it would all be frittered away on little nothings, and I should never be better off for it. Now, I make everything else bend to this, and will find time for it.

We do not know if Lavinia and her father had approached other Janesville attorneys about possibly allowing Lavinia to read the law with them, but A.A. Jackson indisputably played an important role in starting Lavinia on the path toward becoming a lawyer. Jackson survived Lavinia by more than three decades, dying in 1913.

Sources consulted: Lavinia Goodell’s letter to Sarah Thomas (March 7, 1872).