dual personalities

The first Washington University Law School class consisted of eight men in 1867. Two years after the Law School opened its doors, the class that entered had twenty-one students, and remarkably two were women: Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins. They are believed by many to be the nation’s first women law students.

Yesterday marked the 147th anniversary of the day Lemma Barkeloo was admitted to the Missouri Bar, becoming the first woman allowed to practice law in St. Louis. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Barkeloo came west to study at Washington University because Columbia would not admit her. She joined the firm of prominent St. Louis attorney Lucien Eaton in 1870 and her future looked bright indeed.

However, Lemma Barkeloo died late that same year of typhoid fever, although one writer called it “over-mental exertion.” Please.

Studying law at Washington University with Barkeloo was Phoebe Wilson Couzins of St. Louis, who took and passed the Missouri Bar in 1871, making her Missouri’s second and the nation’s third or fourth licensed woman attorney. She later became the first woman admitted to the bar in Arkansas and Utah, and was also admitted to the bar in Kansas and the Dakota Territory. She was also the first woman to serve as a U.S. Marshal. When she died in 1913 she was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery with her U.S. Marshal star pinned to her chest.

Discuss among yourselves.