Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- Social and moral questions
Col. C. K. Pier, his wife, and three daughters, of Madison, Wisconsin,
are widely known as “the Pier family of lawyers.” The Colonel is a
lawyer of long standing. Mrs. Pier and their eldest daughter graduated
from the Law Department of the University of Wisconsin in 1887. All
three practice together. The two younger sisters, Carrie and Harriet,
have nearly finished the course in the law school from which their
mother and sister graduated. Miss Kate, in her twenty-first year,
appeared before the Supreme Court and won her case, the first to be
argued by a woman in the supreme tribunal of the State. A newspaper,
commenting on the fact, says: “Her opponent was J. J. Sutton, a veteran
practitioner. The gray-haired patriarchs of the profession smoothed the
wrinkles out of their waistcoats and straightened their neckties, and
then wiped the specks off their spectacles. The audience was one before
which any young man might readily have been excused for getting rattled.
There were present Gen. E. E. Bryant, dean of the law faculty,
ex-Secretary of the Interior William F. Vilas, and a host of visiting
legal lights. Even the dignified judges were compelled to affect an
extra degree of austerity to conceal their interest in the young
attorney. But Miss Pier showed no sign of embarrassment. Her argument
was direct and to the point, and, moreover, relieved of the
superfluities that frequently characterize the verbose utterances of
more experienced attorneys of the male sex. She stated her case
unhesitatingly, and frequently turned to and cited authorities, showing
an acquaintance with the law and a degree of self-possession which
indicated that she was truly in love with her profession. She showed she
possessed the true mettle for success, and two weeks later, when the
judges rendered their decision, she had the pleasure of winning her
first case. Since then both she and her mother have frequently argued
cases before the Court.”
Almeda E. Hitchcock, of Hilo, Hawaii Islands, graduated from the Law
Department of the Michigan University in 1888, and was admitted to the
Michigan bar. Her father is one of the circuit judges of that far away
island. On her return home she was admitted to the Hawaiian bar on
presentation of her license from the Michigan Court, the first instance
of a woman’s receiving license to practice law in that kingdom. The same
day she was appointed notary public and became her father’s law partner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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