150 Years of Women in Law: Arabella Mansfield Opened the Way in 1869, 1019 COBJ, Vol. 48, No. 9 Pg. 18

• Author: By ROBBIN COSTELLO LEGO
• Position: Vol. 48, 9 [Page 18]

48 Colo.Law. 18

150 Years of Women in Law: Arabella Mansfield Opened the Way in 1869

Vol. 48, No. 9 [Page 18]

Colorado Lawyer

October, 2019

THE SIDEBAR

By ROBBIN COSTELLO LEGO

This year, America celebrates the sesquicentennial of important events in its history, including the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Utah's Promontory Point, the grant to women of the right to vote by the Wyoming territorial legislature, and the admission of the first woman to the practice of law in the United States.

America's first woman lawyer was born Arabella Aurelia Babb on May 23, 1846 on a farm outside of Burlington, Iowa, a Mississippi River town in the southeastern corner of the state.^[1] Her parents, Miles Babb and Mary Moyer, were both born and raised in Pennsylvania, and had separately traveled with their families to the Territory of Iowa in the late 1830s and early 1840s. They were part of the thousands of people who headed to the areas west of the Mississippi as those lands were gradually opened to settlement in the 1830s. Miles's father, John Babb, had owned a coal mine in Pennsylvania, but decided to move to the Iowa territory in 1837, when Miles was 19 years old. John Babb took up farming and prospered. Miles and Mary married in 1843 and moved to their own farm just outside of Burlington shortly thereafter. Their son, Washington Irving (W.I.), was born in October of 1844, and their daughter, Arabella (Belle), a year and a half later.^[2]

By early 1850, Miles apparently caught the "gold fever" that struck many after the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Leaving his family on the farm, he headed to Northern California, where he capitalized on the family background in mining and became superintendent of the Bay State Mining Company. On December 21, 1852, Miles Babb was killed by a mine tunnel cave-in in Georgetown, California. He was 34.^[3]

Iowa Wesleyan and Mount Pleasant

Following Miles's death, Mary and the children remained on the farm, and W.I. and Belle attended schools in nearby Burlington. Mary purchased scholarships to hold places for both W.I. and Belle at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, 30 miles west of Burlington. Iowa Wesleyan, founded in 1842, operated under the authority of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which Mary and her children attended.^[4] In the 1850s, Iowa Wesleyan was one of the few institutions of higher learning in the country to admit women, and it began adding professional schools under its president, lames Harlan, who later served as a U.S. Senator and was appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Lincoln.^[5]

Mary, W.I., and Belle moved to Mount Pleasant when W.I. reached college age in 1860. Mount Pleasant was then a small city of just over 3,500 citizens. The growth of Iowa Wesleyan and the establishment in Mount Pleasant of the Iowa State Hospital for the Insane in 1855 drew academics, doctors, and psychologists to the town.

The city had two newspapers—one associated with the Democratic party and the other with the Republican party. The Republican newspaper was the Mount Pleasant Journal, edited by Frank Hatton, an early supporter of women's suffrage and a local voice for that cause through his paper. Other progressive citizens living in Mount Pleasant at the time included Samuel Howe, a suffragist who founded Mount Pleasant's leading secondary school, Howe's Academy, which had been co -educational from its inception in 1841. Howe also purchased an abolitionist paper in 1849 and published it out of Mount Pleasant for 10 years, and his home in Mount Pleasant was a station on the Underground Railroad. Another progressive resident was Joseph Dugdale, a longtime suffragist and abolitionist in the east, who moved to Mount Pleasantin 1861. He remained involved in the abolition and suffragist movements in Mount Pleasant, and his house, like Howe's, was a station on the Underground Railroad.^[6]

Due to the influence of community leaders such as Harlan, Hatton, Howe, and Dugdale, Mount Pleasant circa 1860 was a stimulating small city where the major political issues of t he day were discussed and debated. Such an atmosphere no doubt had a major impact on Belle Babb as she moved to Mount Pleasant with her family in 1860 and continued her education and life there.

Belle entered Iowa Wesleyan in the fall of 1862, about a year and a half after the Civil War began. Her brother W.I. was a junior at the time, as was John Mansfield, Belle's future husband. Belle studied a four-year classical course, consisting of classes in Greek, Latin, history, math, English, political economy, and science, leading to a bachelor of arts. She may also have taken some law classes taught at the school by leading local attorney Henry Ambler.^[7]

Belle graduated from Iowa Wesleyan in 1866, the same year as her brother, whose...