On Dec. 10, 1869, the Wyoming Territory became the first territory or state to recognize women’s right to vote. An outraged James Stillman, who had been justice of the peace of the frontier mining town of South Pass City since 1867, resigned in protest. District Court Judge John Kingman, a supporter of women’s suffrage, urged the Sweetwater County Commission to appoint Esther Morris as Stillman’s replacement to finish the term.¹

South Pass City, Wyoming

By a two-to-one vote of the three-man commission, Morris’s appointment was approved on Feb. 14, 1870. The chairman, a lumberjack, and another commissioner, a miner, voted in favor while a saloonkeeper, perhaps correctly fearing her stance on public drunkenness, opposed. “The lady [is in] every way qualified,” observed the chairman, and proudly instructed the clerk to telegraph the world that “Wyoming, the youngest and one of the richest Territories in the United States, gave equal rights to women in actions as well as words.”²

The chairman also wrote the territorial governor asking for the issuance of Morris’s judicial commission. The request was swiftly granted on Feb. 17. Due to her gender, however, her qualification was challenged in court but was just as swiftly upheld. Accordingly, she took the oath of office administered by her son, Archy, the district court clerk, thereby becoming the first female judge in America.³

Esther Morris (1814-1902)

Rowdy South Pass City

Unincorporated South Pass City — originally just a stage stop on the Oregon Trail and a boom town since gold was discovered nearby in 1866 — was a rough-and-tumble outpost with 12 saloons and numerous brothels and breweries obliging a multitude of drunken, quarrelsome miners hurriedly spending their day’s find of gold dust. Moreover, Indian raids were common. The Sioux massacred residents and ransacked their homes and sometimes gathered on a hilltop and shot arrows into the center of town.⁴

In response, a fort was built outside the community. In town, a bunker was dug with an iron door for women and children to hide in during attacks, and the governor sent guns and ammunition for distribution to the population of over 2,000. It was difficult to determine which was more dangerous, the Indians or the well-armed drunks.⁵ Being the justice of the peace was more a predicament than an honor.

The formidable gray-haired, 55-year-old, six-foot, 180-pound Esther Hobart Morris had arrived by stagecoach the year before. Born in Spencer, New York, on Aug. 8, 1814, she was orphaned at an early age. While without a formal education, she was well-read and self-reliant. She became a dressmaker, built a thriving millinery business and was active in New York’s anti-slavery movement. At 20, she prevented a Baptist church used for abolitionist meetings from being burned by pro-slavery nightriders by refusing to leave the building.⁶

After her first son was born and her husband died, she moved to Illinois. There she married her second husband, John Morris, and had three more sons, the two surviving were twins: Edward and Archy.⁷ With the advent of the Civil War, she convinced her eldest son, Robert, to fight for the Union.⁸ After the war, when her husband failed in business, the family moved to South Pass City to operate a saloon while her sons searched for gold. Archy eventually got a job as district court clerk.⁹ Some said that Esther was a key figure in the victorious Wyoming women’s suffrage effort of 1869, but this is disputed by modern day historians.¹⁰

South Pass City miners

Justice on the Frontier

Morris’s groundbreaking selection was sensational news. Although the nation’s newspapers falsely portrayed the new judge as an uncouth, cigar-chomping frontier rustic, she was direct but also witty, well-mannered and stylish in her dress being a trained seamstress. As the mother of rambunctious boys, she knew how to command the attention of the troublesome young men arrested and brought before her, yet she was always a patient listener. Civic boosters and churchgoers appreciated her strict sentencing for public drunkenness.¹¹

Even though Morris was not a lawyer and her court had wide jurisdiction in both criminal and civil matters, she was a favorite of the bar because of her decisiveness, common sense and creativity in devising peacemaking solutions to civil disputes, usually debt collections and claim jumping. Her firm control was aided by her shocking decision not to permit firearms in the courtroom and the ever presence of two of her loyal, strapping sons.¹² (Archy, the district court clerk, performed double duty as her clerk.) She appointed another son, Robert, part time deputy clerk.¹³

Nevertheless, Morris’s service had a rocky start. First, her bitter predecessor, James Stillman, refused to turn over the court’s records and docket book. Hence, her first official act was to have him arrested. Nevertheless, she humbly accepted Stillman’s attorney’s argument that the warrant was defective and dismissed the case. A new warrant was issued, but she again agreed with the defense, this time that she had a conflict of interest, and granted another dismissal.¹⁴ She later determined she did not want the records since they were so poorly maintained by Stillman and had a new docket book ordered, “a nice clean one.”¹⁵

Furthermore, upon her husband’s return from one of his frequent trips away vainly searching for financial success, he learned of his wife’s appointment. He angerly burst into a session of her court and forbade her from being a judge. She fined him for contempt. When the fine went unpaid, she had her sons arrest him and take him to jail.¹⁶

After eight and a half months, her term of office came to an end with the adjudication of 70 cases. Two were appealed and her rulings were affirmed in both. Justice Morris wished to run for a full term, but neither political party would nominate her.¹⁷ The smug Stillman was re-elected, but unlike Stillman, she graciously turned the docket and records over to him saying:

Circumstances have transpired to make my position as Justice of the Peace a test of women’s ability to hold public office, and I feel that my work has been satisfactory, although I have often regretted I was not better qualified to fill the position. Like all pioneers, I have labored in faith and hope.¹⁸

The statute of Esther Hobart Morris in the United States Capitol

The Aftermath

A year later, Morris left her abusive, spendthrift, drunken husband and moved to Laramie.¹⁹ In 1873, she declined the nomination of the short-lived Women’s Party for the state house. She moved to Cheyenne in 1876 and lived with her son, Robert, who had become clerk of the state supreme court. She traveled widely and took an active part in the national women’s suffrage movement and the Republican Party. At 81, she served as a delegate to the 1895 Republican National Convention in Cleveland that nominated William McKinley. At the age of 89, she died on April 2, 1902.²⁰ Statues of Morris were placed on the grounds of the Wyoming Capitol Building and inside the U.S. Capitol.²1 Today, South Pass City is a ghost town preserved as a state park. Esther Morris’s town may be dead, but her pioneering legal legacy lives on. |||

Author’s Note: This article is dedicated to former TBA President Marcia Eason of Chattanooga. Like Justice Esther Morris, Eason has been a trailblazer for women in the law. Furthermore, she is a champion of access to justice by low-income Tennesseans and daily proves that a lawyer can be an ever-zealous advocate for her clients yet always gracious and kind.

RUSSELL FOWLER is director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET), and since 1999 he has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has written many publications on law and legal history, and is a regular columnist for the Journal. He received the TBA’s Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing for 2023.

NOTES
1. Marcy Lynn Karin, “Esther Morris and Her Equality State,” Vol. 46, No. 3 The American Journal of Legal History 300, 320 (Oxford Univ. Press: Jul. 2004); Kathryn Swim Cummings, Esther Hobart Morris 112-14 (High Plains Press: 2019).
2. Karin at 320-21.3.
3. Id.
4. Id. at 303-06, 322.
5. Id. at 322.
6. Kathryn Swim Cummings, Esther Hobart Morris 17, 34 (High Plains Press: 2019); Karin at 301-02, 304, 324.
7. Id. at 302-03.
8. Cummings at xi.
9. Karin at 303.
10. See Id. at 312-20; Marilyn Aiken, “The Legend of Esther Morris,” Vol. 35, No. 2 Trial and Error 49 (ABA: 2009); See Cummings at 209-21.
11. Id. at 324-25.
12. Id. at 323, 325.
13. Marilyn Aiken, “The Legend of Esther Morris,” Vol. 35, No. 2 Trial and Error 47, 49 (ABA: 2009).
14. Karin at 327-29.
15. Id. at 329.
16. Id. at 330.
17. Id. at 332-33.
18. Id. at 333.
19. Id. at 334.
20. Karin at 334-35; 341.
21. Cummings at 217-18; 221.