A Woman’s Place Is in Court
Catharine Waugh McCulloch
Catharine Waugh McCulloch (1862-1945) was Illinois’ first female justice of the peace.
Growing up in Millford, IL, Waugh McCulloch showed an early interest in becoming a lawyer; as a child, she swore never to marry so she could pursue a career instead. In the Victorian era, it was commonly believed that a woman should not — or could not — fulfill the responsibilities of a marriage while also pursuing a career, and must therefore choose one or the other.
After graduating from Rockford Female Seminary in 1882, Waugh McCulloch enrolled in the Union College of Law (now Northwestern Pritzker School of Law); in 1886, she graduated and was accepted to the Illinois Bar. Frequently excluded and belittled, Waugh McCulloch faced challenges as the only female law student in her class, and her early career in law was no easier. Hoping to practice law in Chicago like her recently-graduated male colleagues, Waugh was rejected by every prospective law practice she found in the city. Not to be deterred, she returned to Rockford to establish her own law practice.
In Rockford, her good reputation and relationship with the community outweighed any professional prejudice against her sex, and she served in legal cases ranging from foreclosures to divorces to probate cases. Waugh McCulloch’s passion for women’s rights also took form there; she earned a master’s degree at Rockford Female Seminary, studying the inequality between men’s and women’s wages.
While flourishing as a lawyer in Rockford, Waugh McCulloch was courted by Frank McCulloch, an old classmate from Union College of Law. McCulloch had fallen for Waugh McCulloch when they were both law students, but for five years since they met, Waugh McCulloch had turned him down each time he pursued her hand. However, despite her childhood vow, she ultimately decided that, with an equal partnership with another lawyer, she could enjoy dual roles in law and family.
The two married in 1890, and she then moved with him to Evanston to practice law at his firm. Addressing the pervasive anxiety among women lawyers about marriage, Waugh McCulloch later said that women lawyers should be careful to choose husbands who supported them. It was clear that Waugh McCulloch had found such a spouse in her husband. McCulloch was supportive of his wife’s professional ambitions, and he shared her support for women’s rights. He attended suffrage meetings with her in law school and continued to support her involvement in women’s rights movements throughout her career.
Working in Evanston, Waugh McCulloch sought offices that no woman lawyer had achieved before: elected in 1907, she was the first woman to serve as a justice of the peace in Illinois. In 1913, she became the dean at the Illinois College of Law (now DePaul University College of Law). In 1917, she became a master in chancery in the Superior Court.
Throughout her career, Waugh McCulloch also served as a leader in local and national organizations for women’s rights, and she was instrumental in creating and passing several landmark bills. She served as superintendent of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association for twelve years, introducing a bill for women’s suffrage in presidential elections, which was passed in 1913 after facing great resistance. She was also one of the founding members of the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois, wherein she helped introduce and pass a bill allowing women to serve on juries.
Waugh McCulloch’s had a groundbreaking career in law and activism, perhaps made even more remarkable considering that she raised four children throughout it. Her life and work proved the beliefs of her time to be false, and showed that women were capable of contributing in both the home and professional spheres.
Recommended Resources
Drachman, Virginia G. “My ‘Partner’ in Law and Life’: Marriage in the Lives of Women Lawyers in the Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century America.” Law & Social Inquiry 14, No. 2 (Spring 1989): 221-250.
—–. “Women Lawyers and the Quest for Professional Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century America.” Michigan Law Review 88, no. 8 (August 1990): 2414-2443.
“Eight Women Legal Pioneers.” CBA Record 12, no. 1 (January 1998): 30-31.
“The Star of Unconquered Will.” Women Lawyers’ Journal 23, no. 2 (1937): 15-18.
Weisberg, Kelly D. “Barred from The Bar: Women and Legal Education in the United States 1870-1890.” Journal of Legal Education 28, no. 4 (1977): 485-507.
