Arabella Babs Mansfield was the first woman allowed to take the bar examination on June 9, 1868 in Chicago, Illinois. She passed with high scores, making her the first female lawyer in the United States.
Born in Burlington, Iowa in 1846, Mansfield was raised in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. In 1862, she attended college in her hometown at Iowa Weslyean College. Graduating as valedictorian after only three years, she taught for a while at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before moving back to Mt. Pleasant where she married John Mansfield. John was a professor at Iowa Wesleyan and he encouraged his wife to study law. She was very close to her brother, Washington, himself an attorney, and she studied in his law office in preparation for the exam. Prior to Mansfield taking the bar, the state of Iowa had a law in place to allow only white males over the age of twenty-one to take the exam. As a result of Mansfield passing this exam, in 1869, Iowa became the first state to admit women to the practice of law. However, after being sworn in, Mansfield did not actually practice law. Instead, she focused on teaching and activist work.
Her teaching continued at Iowa Wesleyan and DePauw University in Indiana. Here, in 1893, she became a Dean of the School of Art. Another true passion was her work with the National Woman Suffrage Association. She worked closely with Susan B. Anthony on several issues. In 1980, Mansfield was inducted into Iowa’s Women’s Hall of Fame. There is a statue in Mansfield’s honor on the campus of Iowa Weslyean College.
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