Agnes Chase Baker of Laramie was among a select group of women called upon to serve on the world’s first jury to include women, which convened in March of 1870. However, she was dismissed upon her request.
The women on the grand jury and trial jury were selected less than six months after Wyoming’s first territorial legislature granted women equal political rights. Eliza Stewart Boyd’s name was the first female’s to be drawn from the voter’s roll to serve on the Laramie grand jury. The other five women included Mrs. Amelia Hatcher, Mrs. G.F. Hilton, Mrs. Mary Mackell and Mrs. Sarah W. Pease.
Wyoming has long enjoyed a series of “firsts.” In February 1870, Esther Hobart Morris of South Pass City was appointed as the nation’s first female justice of the peace. In 1924, Nellie Tayloe Ross was elected as the first woman governor to complete the term of her husband who died in office.