Civil War era female lawyers?

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
While looking at information about the 3rd Michigan Infantry I found this interesting.

Louisa V. Smith Bryant is buried at Arlington in the officer section. He headstone says "Louisa V. Smith Bryant LL.B, 1834-1902, Civil War Nurse" Her husband I believe died in the War and is buried somewhere else. A couple of her brothers died in the War. So far it is an interesting story. However, why does she have the LL.B after her name?

LL.B means Legum Baccalaureus (Bachelor of Laws). So unless I am mistaken she had an undergraduate degree in law. This was the type of degree Harvard and other colleges and universities were giving as first professional law degrees. So I have a couple of questions.

1. How many universities were giving Bachelor of Law degrees to women during the Civil War era? I would love to know when and where she got her law degree. So can I assume that women with law degrees were more common after the Civil War than before the Civil War? If so, how would one find what year and where she received her Legum Baccalaureus degree?

2. Did most lawyers in the Civil War era even have a Legum Baccalaureus from university?

3. Were female lawyers common in the Civil War era? Perhaps women lawyers were increasingly common in the 1880s-1890s?

Regardless it sounds like she was a remarkable woman.
 
I do know women were going to colleges and universities before the Civil War so I am not totally sexist. However, not all that many colleges were giving out law degrees before the Civil War. I do wonder if she got her law degree after the Civil War. She would have been pushing middle aged after the Civil War. Going to college after serving as a Civil War nurse adds to the story.
 
I believe I found some answers on Bryant, @major bill . :smile:

I am pretty sure she got her law degree at Howard University in D.C. in the early 1880s, and that's why the blog post that @huskerblitz linked has her listed as living there in 1883. The info matches up in the Howard catalog from that time period: a Louise V. Bryant from Colorado Springs is listed as a student in the law department. (That Colorado location also matches the info in the blog post.)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101067479558;view=1up;seq=5

This book was my starting point:
https://books.google.com/books?id=1...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

It includes the names of several white female graduates of the law program at Howard in the late 1800s. Bryant is mentioned in a footnote as an additional graduate. But the book on page 54 says that the university was a popular option for white women who were banned from law programs at white universities since Howard did not ban students due to their race or gender.

Based on this small sampling, I'd say it was not at all common but also not completely unheard of for a woman in the late 1800s to have a law degree. The book I linked above lists 7 women besides Bryant for 1 school in a 22 year period (1880s to early 1900s), with a note that this university was one of their few options.

Based on some other reason I've done--I'm really interested in 19th century women's education and the evolution of college curriculum over the centuries--I'd venture to say a L.L.B. was an unusual degree for a man or woman to have during the Civil War or before and was more common later in the century as that became a more standardized requirement for lawyers. Hate to use Wikipedia as a source, but there is discussion of that in the article on legal education: )

I was doing some research for a client a few months ago. Her ancestor was a "law student" before the Civil War. I checked the course catalog for that school in Illinois for that time. There were just very general tracks of either "Scientific" or "Classical," so we deduced that he must have been in the classical track with the goal of becoming a lawyer. He studied Latin, Greek, rhetoric, logic, etc. Would have been good prep for being an attorney and a very good education for the time for sure, but the school did not offer actual law classes. I was honestly surprised to see the option of having different tracks since a lot of other catalogs I looked at during this time period didn't offer that at all.

Compare it with the Howard curriculum that Bryant would have taken a couple of decades later as spelled out in the Howard catalog--the curriculum is pretty much entirely law classes.

I'm sure Howard being in D.C. and not in remote Illinois also made a difference with the curriculum, too, but it seems indicative of a trend toward more specialized law study rather than the more general college studies earlier lawyers would have received if they had gone to college at all since a lot of Civil War-era lawyers didn't have formal college study, either, like Lincoln. :smile:
 
Very interesting Zella. It appears she went to college in her middle ages. I have known friend who had seen combat that made major changes in their lives. I wonder if what see saw changed her life.
 
Yes I was impressed! She was definitely what would now be considered a nontraditional student now. I'm really curious about her too. She seems like a fascinating lady and a very determined one! I believe she had also been widowed for awhile when she returned to school. That blog post says she had been a teacher before marriage, so I assume her decision to get a law degree was not simply for employment reasons since she would have had an easier time finding a teaching job I'd assume.
 
At the Grand Rapids Civil War Round Table the speaker showed a photo of her grave marker and in his quick discussion of her stated that she translated English to French for the non English speaking soldiers. This to me indicated she had a good education before the War.
 
At the Grand Rapids Civil War Round Table the speaker showed a photo of her grave marker and in his quick discussion of her stated that she translated English to French for the non English speaking soldiers. This to me indicated she had a good education before the War.
Very interesting! She was obviously a very accomplished woman.
 
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