Select bibliography

Primary Sources

Letters, diaries, papers.

Lavinia Goodell’s personal diaries, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, located in Berea College’s Special Collections and Archives. Lavinia’s 1875 diary is missing, but a transcription of it by Berea College Professor Elisabeth Peck still exists.

Letters (25) from Lavinia Goodell to Sarah Thomas, 1872-1879, located in the Special Collections at Williams College.

Letters (hundreds) in William Goodell Family Collection, 1780-1892, located in the Special Collections and Archives at Berea College.

Letters, legal briefs, papers, William Goodell Family Papers, 1737-1933, located in the Oberlin College Archives.

Select publications by Lavinia Goodell.

“A Psychological Experiment,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (June 1866).

Articles, letters (35) by Lavinia Goodell published in Woman’s Journal, 1871-1879.

Articles, poems, stories (39) authored by Lavinia Goodell in The Principia, 1859-1863.

“My Tramp,” Christian Union (Dec. 1, 1875).

“Prayer Meetings in Jail,” Christian Union (May 31, 1876).

“Spherical Domesticity,” Christian Union (Oct. 29, 1879).

Unpublished manuscripts about Lavinia Goodell

Maria Goodell Frost, Life of Lavinia Goodell (undated), located in the Special Collections and Archives at Berea College.

Elisabeth Peck, So Life is Learning (undated), located in the Special Collections and Archives at Berea College.

Contemporary articles about or mentioning Lavinia Goodell

Lavinia Goodell is discussed or mentioned in over 50 articles published between 1866 and 1880 in the following papers: Advance, Chicago Legal News, Christian Union, Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph, Providence Journal, The American Socialist, The Central Law Journal, The Janesville Gazette, Wisconsin Chief, and Woman’s Journal.

Court files relating to Lavinia’s law practice

Hathaway v. Hathaway, Rock County Circuit Court Case (1879).

Ingalls v. State, 48 Wis. 647, 4 N.W. 785 (1880).

In re Goodell, 39 Wis. 232 (1875).

In re Goodell, 48 Wis. 693, 891 N.W. 551 (1879).

Leavenworth v. Leavenworth, Rock County Circuit Court Case (1873-1875).

Tyler v. Burrington, 39 Wis. 2d 376 (1876).

Court files relating to Lavinia’s family

In the Matter of Guardianship of Clarissa C. Goodell, Rock County Circuit Court Case (1877).

In the Matter of the Estate of Clarissa C. Goodell, Rock County Circuit Court Case (1878).

In the Matter of the Estate of William Goodell, Rock County Circuit Court Case (1878).

In the Matter of the Estate of Lavinia Goodell, Dane County Circuit Court Case (1880).

Secondary Sources

Barbara Babcock, Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).

Catherine B. Cleary, “Lavinia Goodell: First Woman Lawyer in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 74, no 4 (Summer 1991).

Betty Diamond, “Lavinia,” (Madison Theater Guild, 2015).

Eugene Exman, The House of Harper (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

Jane M. Friedman, America’s First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993).

Phebe Hanaford, Daughters of America or Women of the Century (True and Company, 1882).

Genevieve McBride, On Wisconsin Women: Working for Their Rights from Settlement to Suffrage (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).

Jill Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President (New York, N.Y.: NYU Press, 2007).

Jill Norgren, Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers (New York, N.Y.: NYU Press, 2013).

Meyer Leon Perkal, William Goodell: A Life of Reform (unpublished Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1972).

Lisa Tetrault, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898, (Chapel Hill, N.C.: UNC Press, 2014)

Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century (Buffalo, N.Y.: Charles Wells Moulton, 1893).