WYOMING – March officially kicks off Women’s History Month and Wyoming history books are chalked full of monumental women who made history throughout the years.
Every year, a presidential proclamation designates March as Women’s History Month. The entire month is set aside to honor the contributions women have made in American history. The collection of information in this article was obtained through womeninhistory.org, wyohistory.org and the Wyoming Women’s Foundation.
What began as a local week-long celebration in Santa Rosa, California, Women’s History Month, quickly spread across the county and other communities soon joined the movement, according to womenshistory.org.
In 1980, the National Women’s History Project, now known as the National Women’s History Alliance, along with several women’s groups and historians, lobbied for national recognition, successfully. In February 1980, the first presidential proclamation declared the week of March 8, 1980, as National Women’s History Week, was signed by President Jimmy Carter.
Women in Wyoming have been making history since before the proclamation was signed beginning in 1869 when William Bright introduced a bill recognizing women’s right to vote.
Within a few short months, on March 7, 1870, Wyoming women officially became jurors on a grand jury for the first time in history, in Laramie, Wyoming Territory.
The first woman in history to act as a bailiff for that same grand jury was Martha Symons Boies.
The jury was composed of up to nine men and six women. Judge John Howe presided over the matter.
“A grand jury has the power to investigate potentially criminal conduct and decides whether criminal charges should be brought against a defendant or group of defendants,” wyohistory.org said. “Women had never served on grand juries or trial juries before.”
The first chosen juror was Eliza Stewart. Stewart was born in Pennsylvania in 1835 and she served as the class valedictorian in her graduating class from Washington Female Seminary, in Washington, Pennsylvania. She arrived in Laramie in 1868, as a single 35-year-old woman. She was also Laramie’s first schoolteacher. She served on a second jury in 1871.
Mary Jane Mackle, another of Wyoming’s first female jurors, was born in New York City in 1847. She married Joseph Mackle, a clerk at Fort Sanders near Laramie, in 1862 when she was merely 15-year-old.
Jane Hilton, also from New York, was born in 1829. In 1870 when she was selected to be seated on the jury, she was living in Laramie with her husband, George F. Hilton, who later organized the Methodist church. Hilton later served again on the grand jury again in 1871.
Sarah Pease, born in 1840 in Illinois, moved to Laramie in 1869 with her husband, Lorenzo Dow Pease, a prominent attorney, and judge. Pease later went on to serve as the Albany County Superintendent of Schools for two terms. She also wrote a book detailing her account of the first jury.
“Mrs. Martha Symons Boies (later Atkinson) was selected to act as a bailiff for that same grand jury, the first woman in history to serve in such a judicial position,” wyohistory.org reports. “Mrs. Boies was called upon because one of the cases that the mixed-gender jury was hearing ran very long into the evening and the judge required that they stay overnight in a local hotel. He further ordered that they be provided the protection of a bailiff. Given the sensitivity of women being on a jury, he selected a woman to guard their rooms.”
Women would be seated on juries again in Laramie in March and September of 1871 and in March and July of that year in Cheyenne. They were selected for both grand and trial juries.
Throughout history, the reasoning for the seating of women on jury trials changed.
“Two reasons have been given for issuing a jury call to the women, and a third seems likely. Judge John Kingman, who assisted Judge Howe in the court session, stated later that women were put into the jury pool by the Albany County Commissioners,” wyohistory.org reports. “Kingman claimed that the commissioners were opposed to female suffrage and if the women served, their service would surely be unsatisfactory and could be used to throw scorn on the 1869 suffrage act.”
Later, Pease claimed judges were tired of men being inattentive to the court proceedings in prior sessions and they were unwilling to convict their acquaintances.
“Judge Kingman was frequently noted as an ardent supporter of the 1869 suffrage act. He is also credited with assisting in the appointment of Esther Hobart Morris as the first woman justice of the peace. He may have construed the act’s words ‘to hold office’ to include jury duty,” wyohistory.org said.
As history reports, even before the women who were chosen could be seated, Albany County attorney Stephan Wheeler Downey asked Judge Howe about the legality of women serving as jurors. When the women were called on March 7, 1870 Downey asked again for the courts to exclude the women jurors.
Howe was said to have reiterated his stand and the six women were seated.
Downey wasn’t the only opposition faced by the female jurors. Nathan Baker, the editor for the Cheyenne Leader, argued women were too emotionally minded to serve as jurors.
