Caroline Burnham Kilgore

Caroline Burnham Kilgore (1838–1909) was the first woman to be admitted to the bar in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.[1] Orphaned at age eleven, she supported herself as a domestic worker and later as a teacher.[2] Kilgore was also interested in medicine, receiving the degree of M.D. in 1865; she was the first woman to receive an M.D. degree in the state of New York.[2][3]

The University of Pennsylvania Law School rejected her application in 1871.[4] She attempted to buy individual tickets to attend lectures.[5] One of the law professors, E. Spencer Miller, told her: "I do not know what the Board of Trustees will do, but as for me, if they admit a woman I will resign for I will neither lecture to niggers nor women."[5] Some time later, she sent her husband to purchase the lecture passes, but the Board of Trustees informed her that even if she attended every required lecture and passed all of the examinations, they would not guarantee that she would earn a diploma.[5] Based on having read the law with her boyfriend, she asked to take the bar exam in 1873 and 1874, but was refused.[4] In 1881 she became the first female law student admitted to the University of Pennsylvania; she graduated in 1883.[6]

She was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1885, and before the United States Supreme Court in 1890.[4]

She was a member of the Citizens' Suffrage Association and tried to vote at city and county elections in 1871.[7] She was ruled against and appealed to the full state supreme court, which affirmed the ruling against her.[7] She published a pamphlet with her argument before the state supreme court, titled Woman Suffrage. The Argument of Carrie S. Burnham, which also included the opinion of the man who originally ruled against her, George Sharswood.[7]

Legacy

During the University of Pennsylvania's Homecoming Weekend of October 1965, the Trustees dedicated Kilgore House, one of the four houses in the Robert C. Hill Residence Hall, in her honor.[6]

She is listed as one of the Philadelphia Bar Association's Legends of the Bar.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 "Legends of the Bar". Philadelphiabar.org. Retrieved 2015-03-22.
  2. 1 2 Robert R. Bell (1992). The Philadelphia Lawyer: A History, 1735–1945. Susquehanna University Press. pp. 164–. ISBN 978-0-945636-26-7.
  3. ↑ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States, as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time. University Microfilms. 1907. pp. 553–.
  4. 1 2 3 Rebecca Mae Salokar; Mary L. Volcansek (1 January 1996). Women in Law: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 123–. ISBN 978-0-313-29410-5.
  5. 1 2 3 "Barred From the Bar - A History of Women and the Legal Profession, by Hedda Garza". American-buddha.com. Retrieved 2015-05-04.
  6. 1 2 "1880–1900: Timeline of Women at Penn, University of Pennsylvania University Archives". Archives.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2015-03-22.
  7. 1 2 3 Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan Brownell Anthony (2000). The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Against an aristocracy of sex, 1866 to 1873. Rutgers University Press. pp. 637–. ISBN 978-0-8135-2318-7.
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