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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.

Sep

2023

“All men are commanded to repent. How significant that no women are thus commanded!”

Lavinia Goodell, May 1872

In early 1872, newspapers reported the scandalous story that Sarah Smiley, a Quaker woman, had been allowed to preach in a Brooklyn Presbyterian church. Lavinia Goodell, who had moved from Brooklyn to Janesville, Wisconsin the previous year, followed the story with interest and wrote a series of articles expressing her support that women should be allowed in the ministry – and in every other profession. Read more here.

Professor S.C. Bartlett, D.D., who was then a professor at the Chicago Theological Seminary and later became the president of Dartmouth College, wrote lengthy opinion pieces for the Advance, a weekly publication of the Congregational Church, arguing that St. Paul himself forbade women from preaching and how dare Ms. Smiley or anyone else think otherwise.

Bartlett’s articles caught the attention of Henry Ward Beecher, the famous pastor whose Brooklyn church Lavinia had sometimes attended.

Beecher was a woman’s rights advocate and countered Bartlett’s arguments. This led to a spirited back and forth between the two men.

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Aug

2023

“Is woman’s position one of equality with man, or subjection to him?”

Lavinia Goodell, August 1873

In the summer of 1873, a year before she became a lawyer, Lavinia Goodell read an editorial titled “Woman Suffrage and Marriage” that had appeared in the Cincinnati Gazette. The premise of the piece was that there was no point in allowing women to vote because they would obviously vote in lock step with their husbands. As the Gazette put it, “To give the wife a vote, so that she may vote as her husband does, is simply to give the married man two votes.” Lavinia found this notion “exasperatingly absurd” and promptly wrote an article responding to it.

Lavinia read the offending Cincinnati Gazette piece when it was reprinted in full in the July 19, 1873 issue of Lucy Stone’s Woman’s Journal. Lucy Stone herself introduced the piece with the heading “An enemy’s view.”

Lavinia’s response appeared in the August 16, 1873 issue of the Woman’s Journal. She wrote:

Is woman’s position one of equality with man, or subjection to him? This is the question at issue between woman suffragists and their opponents…. No one among us has ever tried to … put [this issue] out of sight. That has been left for our opponents to do; and most of them have had the shrewdness and good policy to do it.
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Aug

2023

“If women be voted for, what shall long hinder them from voting?”

“If women be voted for, what shall longer hinder them from voting?”

Lavinia Goodell, March 1874

Lavinia Goodell was an avid reader and did not shy away from reading materials with which she disagreed. When that occurred, she would sometimes write a rebuttal piece in order to share her opposing viewpoint with the publication’s readers. She did this in March of 1874, three months before being admitted to practice law. Her target was an article in the Advance, a weekly publication of the Congregational Church, that proclaimed, “Taxation without representation is sometimes right.” In an article published in the Woman’s Journal, Lavinia said this notion was “enough to make a monarchist tear his hair with regret.”

Lavinia then turned the discussion, as she often did, to the right to vote. She noted that in the Middle Ages, “those paying taxes on property had the right of voting for members of Parliament,” which was the body that gave or withheld funds. so it became a principle of English common law “that those protected owed allegiance, and that those taxed should be represented.”

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Jul

2023

“The idea that the husband is the political representative of his wife is a fallacious one.”

Lavinia Goodell, May 1871

In another of her series of articles refuting commonly held beliefs about why women should not be allowed to vote, Lavinia Goodell rebutted the notions that there was no need for women to have the franchise because men already represented their views and that allowing women to participate in political decisions would create dissension in the home. She began:

As to the notion that man represents woman, Lavinia said that this was just another theory “added to the already too numerous ones for lowering the standard of marriage” since women would then be tempted to wed, not just to gain a home, social position, or financial support, “but for the object of securing a representative in the government.” She found the idea that a husband is, or can be, the political representative of his wife a fallacious one since representatives are chosen for a short term of office to insure obedience to the will of the people he represents. Marriage, she said, was a different institution altogether:

Since it will scarcely be considered practicable for a woman to change husbands every year, or every few years, it will be perceived that the fundamental principles of matrimony and of representation are totally different from and inconsistent with each other.
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Jul

2023

“Whether woman needs the ballot or not, the ballot needs her.”

Lavinia Goodell, June 1871

In 1871, shortly before she gave up her job at Harper’s Bazar in New York City and moved to Wisconsin to look after her elderly parents,

Lavinia Goodell wrote a series of articles for the Woman’s Journal dispelling common myths on why women should not vote. In a piece that appeared in the June 23, 1871 issue of the Woman’s Journal, refuted the notions that women already held such broad influence that they did not need the franchise; that suffrage would do working women no good; and that women did not actually want to vote. She began:

Lavinia said women did need the ballot, particularly women of little means. “The women who possess the greatest social influence are those who need it least for the protection of their interests…. The poor working women, the widows and orphans, whose facts are worn with care and anxiety, and whose clothing is plain and meager, possess little of this influence. These are they who need the protection of the ballot.”

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Jun

2023

“Hark! Is that the step of my first client that I hear approaching my door?”

Lavinia Goodell, July 14, 1874

Immediately after being admitted to practice law on June 17, 1874, Lavinia Goodell took steps to open a legal practice. She had hoped to join Pliny Norcross and A. A. Jackson in their practice, but while Norcross was willing to allow her to share their offices, Jackson was not, so Lavinia told her sister, “I shall have to give up that little scheme.” However, as luck would have it, there were empty rooms for rent on the same floor of the Tallman Building as Jackson & Norcross, and Lavinia engaged one of those offices for $33.33 per annum, to be paid by the month.

Tallman Block, site of Lavinia’s first law office

Lavinia described her office:

A rather small room, but about right, with two east windows, and a small closet out of it. I have bought Mr. Hoppin’s desk, which Rebecca was glad to sell for $10.

My office is prettily furnished, and everybody says it looks pleasant. I have a pink straw matting on the floor, the one that was on my bedroom last summer, turned the other side up. Mr. Hoppin’s desk varnished over, a carpet lounge, two rocking and three arm chairs, a table on which reposes my small library. (Gerrit Smith sent her $20 to put toward her library.) And in the closet, mirror, washstand, toilet articles…. All I want now is a few good clients, which I hope the good Providence, which has always provided so well for me, will send.
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Jun

2023

“The middle aged, grey headed individual who now addresses you is an honorable member of the Wisconsin bar.”

Lavinia Goodell, June 18, 1874

On the evening of Wednesday, June 17, 1874, after successfully passing a rigorous examination administered by three elder statesmen, Lavinia Goodell made history by being sworn in as Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer. The following day she wrote a long letter to her cousin Sarah Thomas. Lavinia’s own words recount the excitement of the event far better than any summary could do:

My Dear Girl,

The middle aged, grey headed individual who now addresses you is an honorable member of the Wisconsin bar. I was admitted last night, and am still in the first enthusiastic glow of happiness produced thereby.

I was in agony of impatient suspense all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Spent the time at the office, so as to get the latest intelligence from court, and devoted myself to reviewing.

Wednesday about 5 p.m. Mr. ___ came down from court saying that the prospect looked dubious. One case was finished, but they were rushing another one and he did not know when they would get time to attend to us. But he said that the young man from Beloit had come, and perhaps I had better go up and see him, and see if we could get the judge to approve a time.
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Jun

2023

“I am bound to get in if I climb up the roof and go down the chimney.”

Lavinia Goodell, June 8, 1874

During the first two weeks of June 1874, Lavinia Goodell’s mind was consumed with plans to take the bar examination so that she could be admitted to practice law in Wisconsin. It was not clear until an hour prior to the examination on June 17 whether she would actually be allowed to sit for it. In a June 8 letter to her cousin Sarah Thomas, Lavinia wrote:

Have passed through some mental excitement since I wrote you last. I write you in my last letter Tuesday that I had made an attempt to have an application made for my admittance, but the man from whom I expected aid failed me. Wednesday morning when I went downtown, I was informed that the reason was because some of the lawyers, who were on intimate terms with the judge, had told him that the judge had intended to refuse me, on account of my sex, so he thought he would wait and consult me, as perhaps I would prefer to back out, and so avoid the “mitten.” (To “get the mitten” was to be rejected.)

I was very much stirred up by this piece of news and informed him that I would be admitted to the bar of Wisconsin, if I lived a few years longer, and that if Judge Conger refused me I would make him sorry for it before I had done with him, together with some other plucky and strong minded remarks, indicative of an intensely martial state of mind.
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