Sarah Killgore Wertman

Sarah Killgore Wertman, née Killgore (1 March 1843, Jefferson, Indiana - 21 May 1935, Seattle, Washington) was an American lawyer.[1] She was the first female law student at the University of Michigan, and to be admitted to the State Bar of Michigan, becoming the first woman to both graduate from law school and be admitted to the Bar of any state in the United States.[2]

Sarah Killgore Wertman

Life

Killgore Wertman was born in Jefferson, Clinton County, Indiana on March 1, 1843 to David and Elizabeth Killgore. Killgore's father was a prominent local attorney and encouraged his daughter's study of the law. Her religious upbringing led Killgore to attend seminary school, graduating from Ladoga Seminary in Ladoga, Indiana in 1862. She then worked for a number of years as a school teacher.[3]

She began studying law at Chicago University (now the University of Chicago) in 1869, and went on to study law at the University of Michigan Law School, becoming the first female law student in the School's history. Killgore Wertman graduated from the University with an LL.B. in March 1871. Later that year she was admitted to the Michigan State Bar.[4] In 1875 she married Jackson S. Wertman, an attorney, and the pair moved to Indiana and opened a joint practice there. Under Indiana law, however, women were not eligible for admission to the bar, and so she handled the practice's real estate matters as well as office tasks, while her husband made court appearances.[2] The couple had three children, Shields K., Helen M., and Clay (who died in infancy). In 1878, the couple moved to Ashland, Ohio and Killgore Wertman retired from law practice in order to raise the couple's children. In September 1893, she sat for and passed the Ohio bar examination. Once admitted to the Ohio bar, Killgore Wertman returned to her husband's law practice, specializing in real estate law.

Killgore Wertman was also a lifelong member of the Equity Club, an organization of women lawyers based at the University of Michigan.[2]

Killgore Wertman and her husband later followed their children to Washington state, settling in Seattle, where she continued to reside until her death in 1935.

References
  1. Virginia G. Drachman, Wertman, Sarah Killgore, American National Biography. Copyright American Council of Learned Societies. Published Oxford University Press. Online Feb. 2000.
  3. Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. Buffalo, N.Y: Moulton. p. 759. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
  4. Michigan Bar Journal, Volume 63, No. 6 (June 1984). Reprinted here Archived 2012-12-14 at Archive.today
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