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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.

Feb

2023

“Went to inquire about Lily Peckham.”

Lavinia Goodell, June 3, 1874

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.

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Jan

2023

“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 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.

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Jan

2023

“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.

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.”

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Jan

2023

“Getting married is not the great object of life.”

Lavinia Goodell, May 1860

In the sixth and final chapter of her series (posts about the earlier chapters may be found here: part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five) titled “Chapters to Young Men, on How to Win a Wife,” Lavinia Goodell offered one final piece of advice: men should not make finding a wife their primary life’s ambition.

After saying that she hoped gentlemen were taking the advice offered in her previous columns, Lavinia wrote:

I have an additional word of exhortation. . . . [Y]ou mustn’t be all these good things merely for the sake of “winning a wife,” but for their own sake. Getting married is not the great object of life. . . . Everything is viewed through the lens of “matrimony.” A certain amount of effort and money is devoted to the business of wife-getting. . . . Would such a girl make a good wife? If not, it is no use wasting any time and money on her! The idea that people may associate for the purpose of enjoying each other’s society, as friends, for mutual improvement and happiness is unknown. . . . They experiment very carefully and economically, till they make a selection, and then draw their chosen one from the group and don’t care a whistle for everybody else in the world. . . . Now I hope you don’t entertain any such narrow views of life!

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Jan

2023

“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.

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Dec

2022

“Clear and cold. Got up late.”

Lavinia Goodell, January 1, 1879

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.)

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.

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Dec

2022

“I am getting to like Dickens.”

Lavinia Goodell, March 1, 1866

At this time of year many people have a tradition of either reading A Christmas Carol or watching one of the many screen adaptations. From 1867 until she moved to Janesville, Wisconsin in 1871, Lavinia Goodell worked at Harper’s Bazar, a fashion magazine that was part of the prestigious Harper & Brothers publishing empire. Harpers had many well-known writers in its stable, including A Christmas Carol’s author, Charles Dickens.

Lavinia Goodell was an avid reader and her letters often mentioned her current reading choice. She mentioned Dickens multiple times. In 1862 she reported that she had finished reading Pickwick Papers and planned to read Great Expectations when time permitted. In 1866 she praised David Copperfield, saying “really am quite interested in it. It is better than anything else of his I ever read.” (In the summer of 1867 for some reason Lavinia seemed less enchanted with the British author, telling her sister that she liked Thackeray “even less than Dickens, though he doesn’t indulge so much in low characters.”)

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Dec

2022

“Now young man, are you a gentleman?”

“Now, young man, are you a gentleman?”

Lavinia Goodell, May 12, 1860

In the fifth part of her series offering young men advice on how to win a wife (read about the first, second, third, and fourth chapters in the series here), twenty-one year old Lavinia Goodell stressed the importance of good manners. She began her piece:

She noted that the word “gentleman:”

Has come to mean one of a select caste, a man of property, a man with dependents, a man of idleness or a fop — at best, one who regards only the mere outside forms, conventionalities, of life. As such it is justly contemptible. But this is a perversion. I wish I knew all about the origin of the word! … [E]vidently, … the word is intended to indicate “a man of gentleness” — a gentle man. Alas! How few gentlemen there are!

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