Women at the Bar: The First Century of Women Attorneys in Grand Rapids, 1870s–1970s

by Ruth Stevens

In the 1960s and 1970s, a new wave of women attorneys began joining the bar in Grand Rapids, paving the way for many who followed. Yet they were not the first female attorneys to practice law in Grand Rapids. In the late 1870s, Elizabeth Eaglesfield, one of the early female graduates of the University of Michigan Law School, hung out her shingle and began advertising for clients. Shortly after 1900, Ella Mae Backus became the long lasting backbone of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Michigan. She was followed by the occasional individual, like Gale Saunders, largely unknown today.

Before women became fully enfranchised citizens in 1920, they had more difficulty entering the law than they did many other professions. As women, they were disenfranchised. As lawyers and licensed members of the legal profession, they had position within the conventional institutions of power. But even graduates of good law

Elizabeth Eaglesfield

Elizabeth Eaglesfield began a private practice when she returned to Grand Rapids in 1886 and had office space in the relatively new Twamley Building (see page 4). City directories, however, indicate that her office moved frequently until, toward the end of her career in Grand Rapids, we find her address in the office of another attorney. As early as 1889 Eaglesfield commented on the difficulties faced by women attorneys in a Grand Rapids newspaper feature: “I can’t say that my business is increasing with that rapidity that I could desire. . . . The advance of our sex in the professions has been so rapid and so recent that many prejudices exist against us. Men are afraid to associate us with them in the trial of a cause . . . and clients are afraid to trust us with cases that have to be submitted to [an all-male] jury.”

schools had a difficult time practicing, and many early women attorneys rarely left their desks in the back rooms of their husbands' law offices. The first women in Grand Rapids did not fit that norm. Then beginning in the 1940s and 1950s a handful more women attorneys kept alive the idea that women could practice the law until new pioneers began arriving in greater numbers.

The Twamley Building circa 1950. It was a relatively new building in the 1880s, at the corner of Lyon and Monroe, and the location of Elizabeth Eaglesfield’s first office shortly after receiving her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School.

About the Author Prof. Ruth Stevens

Attorney and GVSU professor Ruth Stevens will trace the history of the first century of women lawyers in Grand Rapids, bringing to life the stories of the early attorneys and linking them to the next wave of pioneers who helped shape the Grand Rapids legal community as it is today.

“Women at the Bar: The First Century of Women Attorneys in Grand Rapids, 1870s–1970s” presented by Ruth Stevens,Attorney and Grand Valley State University professor, Thursday, March 13, 2014, 7:00 p.m. Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, co-sponsored by Greater Grand Rapids Women’s Historical Commission.