Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • S4

4 BREAKING THROUGH SERIES 2020 CHRISTINE PETERSON For the Star-Tribune I the heart of the unruly West, in a bustling mining town where most people were men and most business was conducted over whiskey and beer in saloons, ruled the female justice of the peace. She was an abolitionist and suragist, a mother and a wife. She was strong, opinionated and, according to one news- paper, terror of all She was just what the acting governor was looking for to test Wy- groundbreaking law giving women the right to vote and participate in politics. And for her service, Esther Hobart Morris has assumed her place in history as a leader of rights not just in Wyoming, but across the country. Her likeness is displayed in Cheyenne and Washington D.C.

Her name is associated with other trailblazing women like Nel- lie Tayloe Ross, the female governor, Estelle Reel, the woman elected to statewide oce in Wyoming, and Sandra Day the female supreme court justice. While debate remains over her role in surage move- ment, historians say her documented accomplishments stand on their own. showed that women could do said Renee Laegreid, professor of the American West at the University of Wyoming. world go to hell in a handbasket if women became involved in Born in 1814 in New York, Morris was orphaned at 11, but later apprenticed to a seamstress and became a success- ful hat maker and purveyor of clothes. She married a civil engineer in her late 20s, and shortly after they had a child, she was widowed.

When Morris moved to Illinois to settle her late es- tate, she realized she could not assume the property he left her. Women, she was told, were not allowed to own or inherit property. In 1850, she married again, this time to John Morris, a local merchant. They had twin boys, and in 1869, she followed her husband to South Pass City in the brand new Wyoming Territory, where he planned to run a saloon. Esther Hobart family had ties to the abolition movement in the East and surage, said Laegreid, and she maintained those connections through letters shipped back home by rail.

she moved, she was an impor- tant person in the Laegreid said. and her husband were well estab- lished, and she shy about her opinions. She never had From there, versions of history seem to dier. Some accounts written long after death say that Morris had a hand in securing the votes needed to pass surage. The most likely story is that the movement to allow women to vote in Wyoming was already well under- way for reasons noble and otherwise, said Tom Rea, historian and editor of wyohis- tory.org, a project of the Wyoming State Historical Society.

Regardless, about a week after women were granted the right to vote, also giving them the right to serve on juries, run for public oce and become judges, Morris heard her call. South Pass City, with its dozen saloons, two breweries, handful of brothels and thousands of desperate men scouring every crevasse and ravine for gold, sound like a progressive haven waiting for the female justice of the peace. But Morris was the right person at the right time. In early 1870, a district court judge encouraged Morris to the eight and a half months left vacant when the previous justice of the peace resigned. The appointment was contested and ul- timately approved by Edward Lee, the acting governor.

wanted to put her in a place that said, you have political rights and we will enforce them right Laegreid said. two of them knew each other, and he probably knew she had the per- sonality and the ability to take on that role and stand up to the predominantly male mining camp. He going to put an- yone in there that And by all accounts, she did succeed. Frank Illustrated Newspaper wrote several months into ten- ure that she gave delight to all lovers of peace and The assessment of her, however, was a detailed account of her wardrobe calico gown, worsted breakfast-shawl, green ribbons in her hair, and a green which Laegreid says may well have been embellished to ease con- cerns that a professional woman might no longer be domestic. Morris sent thieves to jail, delivered severe punishment for drunkenness and brought domestic abusers to justice.

She wrote in a letter that she more in faith and but that she also deemed her work had Most knew her as fair and honest. And when the time came to run for public oce again, Morris declined. put yourself back in the 19th cen- tury, she made a point, and then it was time to go back home and her do- mestic Laegreid said. was one thing in that age for a male judge to throw people in jail, another thing for a woman to do it, and there were some men who did not want to see her back in that One of those men was her husband, who forcefully disapproved of her ap- pointment. At one point, he disrupted her courtroom so much she had him thrown in jail.

Of the nearly 30 cases she presided over, none were overturned by higher courts. Morris left the bench, and later South Pass City and her husband. She went on to support surage movements across the country. She spent much of the end of her life in Cheyenne, honored two decades later at statehood celebration. Morris died at 87.

But her legacy, the truth of a mother, wife and businessowner who moved to a tough mining town and pioneered the path to law and politics for all woman, remains today carved on statues, taught in lessons and scrawled in history books across the nation. COURTESY OF THE WESTERN HISTORY CENTER AT CASPER COLLEGE Esther Hobart Morris of South Pass City became the female justice of the peace in 1870. Her case was to prosecute her predecessor, who refused to relinquish his docket and records in protest of a woman the position. JUSTICE Groundbreaking Esther Hobart Morris, the female justice of the peace, paved the way for women in politics.