Lavinia Goodell

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We are delighted to illuminate the important work of Lavinia Goodell. This blog shares significant moments in Lavinia’s life and excerpts from her personal papers. You may browse the posts or use the Table of Contents to find posts that interest you. Please subscribe and help spread the word about Wisconsin's first woman lawyer.

Mar

2021

“Got a telegram from Lucy Stone that her suffrage convention was to be here”

Lavinia exchanged dozens of letters with Lucy Stone, a pioneer for women’s rights and one of the most famous women in mid-19^th century America. In 1870, Lucy and her husband launched the Woman’s Journal, which was hailed as a “history-maker and history recorder for the suffrage cause” by Carrie Chapman Catt, who played a leading role in the passage of the 19^th Amendment. Catt said “the suffrage success of today is not conceivable without the Woman’s Journal‘s part in it.” Lavinia not only wrote for the Woman’s Journal, in December 1879 she was formally listed on its masthead as a contributor.

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Mar

2021

“Miss Eveleth & Carrie Jocelyn are off for Beaufort, S.C. to teach the contrabands.”

Lavinia Goodell, January 11, 1864

Prior to the Civil War, it was illegal for enslaved people to learn to read or write. Beginning in 1863, Freedmen’s schools were created in areas occupied by Union forces to provide education for newly freed Blacks. (The Blacks were referred to as “contrabands of war.”) Lavinia Goodell, who grew up in a staunch abolitionist family, knew several women who taught at Freedmen’s schools.

Freedmen’s School at Edisto Island, South Carolina

In early 1864, Carrie Jocelyn and Emma Eveleth, two of Lavinia’s friends from Brooklyn, traveled to Hilton Head island off the coast of Beaufort, South Carolina, to teach at two Freedmen’s schools. The schools were run under the auspices of the American Missionary Association.

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Mar

2021

“If I have any model in fiction, it is Mrs. Stowe.”

Lavinia Goodell, April 21, 1860

Lavinia Goodell’s acquaintance with Congregationalist preacher Henry Ward Beecher has already been chronicled, but she was also an avid reader of the prose produced by two of Henry’s sisters, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Catharine Beecher.

Harriet Beecher was born in 1811. After teaching for several years, in 1832 she accompanied her father, Congregational minister Lyman Beecher, to Cincinnati, Ohio when he became the president of Lane Seminary. In Cincinnati, Harriet met reformers and abolitionists and in 1833 published her first book, Primary Geography. In 1836 she married Calvin Stowe, a professor at Lane Seminary. Calvin encouraged Harriet’s writing. Harriet wrote many articles and thirty books.

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Mar

2021

Would you hire this woman?

It’s Women’s History month, so we decided to put together Lavinia Goodell’s resume and ask a few employers if they would hire someone like her. They all found her credentials impressive. One said she would definitely hire Lavinia as a lawyer, but her resume does not convey “team player.” Others wondered whether silk stocking law firms would be afraid to hire her. She could repel clients who don’t share her values. She might be better off as a sole practitioner tackling social justice issues.

Just think of it. The woman who opened the Wisconsin legal profession to women 150 years ago might have a hard time landing a job today!

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Mar

2021

“We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.”

Margaret Fuller, 1845

Although Margaret Fuller may not widely known today, in the mid-nineteenth century she was a well known teacher, editor, and essayist whose best known book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, examined the place of women within society. Lavinia Goodell admired Margaret Fuller’s works and spent countless hours reading them in order to prepare a paper that she delivered at a December 1877 meeting of Janesville, Wisconsin’s literary society, the Mutual Improvement Club.

Photo of Margaret Fuller — Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller was born in Massachusetts in 1810. A precocious child, her father, a lawyer, oversaw her education, providing his daughter with tutors in Latin, philosophy, history, science, literature, and German. After her father’s death in 1835, the family found itself quite poor, and Margaret went to Boston as a teacher. She taught in Bronson Alcott’s school and offered classes for young ladies. She became a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists. Few would accuse her of being overly modest. It was while dining at Emerson’s home that Margaret uttered what is probably her best remembered remark: “I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable with my own.”

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Mar

2021

“I have been deeply interested in Dr. Zak’s book.”

Lavinia Goodell, February 25, 1861

Lavinia Goodell was a voracious reader and had eclectic tastes. In addition to reading the popular fiction of the day, she was also very interested in medical and scientific topics. For a time she had a roommate, Nancie Monelle, who was studying medicine, and her lifelong friend Mary Ann Wattles was also a physician.

One of the pioneering woman physicians in the United States was Marie E. Zakrewska. Not only did Lavinia eagerly read the doctor’s autobiography, she and Zakrewska shared a close mutual friend, and there is certainly a possibility that Lavinia met Zakrewska.

Photo of Dr. Marie Zakrewska, a pioneering woman physician in the United States. — Dr. Marie E. Zakrewska

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Mar

2021

“Mary Booth is as good a friend as ever.”

Lavinia Goodell, April 26, 1866

When Lavinia Goodell went to work for the newly minted Harper’s Bazar magazine in 1867 (read about her experiences here and here), she worked with and shared an office with Bazar’s editor, Mary Louise Booth, one of the best known and best paid women in publishing.

Mary Booth was born on Long Island in 1831. She displayed great literary tendencies at an early age and was naturally inclined toward the study of languages. By the time she was 20, she had begun translating foreign literary works into English. In 1859 she published A Complete History of the City of New York, which received rave reviews, and later published two revised editions. During the Civil War, Mary Booth translated Gasparin’s The Uprising of a Great People in the course of a week during which she worked round the clock. President Lincoln wrote her a letter of thanks for her help in strengthening the spirit of the American people.

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Mar

2021

“The part assigned to women by nature is inconsistent with the practice of law.”

In re Dorsett, Minnesota Court of Common Pleas, October 1876

Martha Angle Dorsett was the first woman admitted to practice law in Minnesota. Ms. Dorsett was born in New York in 1851. After earning a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Michigan, she enrolled in the Iowa College of law. She graduated there in 1876 and married her classmate, Charles Dorsett, the same year.

Photo of Martha Angle Dorsett — Martha Angle Dorsett

Dorsett and her husband were admitted to the Iowa bar. They then relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they applied for admission to practice in Minnesota’s courts. Charles Dorsett’s application was granted. Martha Dorsett’s was not.

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