Louisa Ann (Eliza) Swain of Laramie was the first woman in the United States to vote in a general election after the Wyoming Territorial Legislative Assembly gave women the right to vote in December 1869.

On September 6, 1870, Mrs. Swain happened to walk by the polling place, which had not yet officially opened, but election officials asked her to come in and cast her ballot. The Laramie Daily Sentinel described her as “a gentle white-haired housewife, Quakerish in appearance.” Swain was 69 years old and one of 93 women to vote that day in Laramie.

In 2005, a bronze sculpture honoring Swain was dedicated in front of the Wyoming House for Historic Women.  The museum is located on 2nd Street between Garfield and Grand in Laramie and honors twelve Wyoming women whose lives have impacted the world.

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Martha Symons Boies Atkinson was appointed as the first female bailiff in the world in 1870 when the first jury to include women was seated in Laramie.  As the trial wore on, the judge ordered that the jury be sequestered. Only a woman could guard the hotel room doors of other women and so Atkinson was selected.

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.

Learn more about Martha Symons Boies Atkinson

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Esther Hobart Morris was, and still is, larger than life. A bronze sculpture of her stands before the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne and as Wyoming’s representative in Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Morris has always been a symbol for the women’s rights movement, but historians believe there may be more “lore” than truth to the stories of her independent attitude, support of women’s issues and force behind the Women’s Suffrage Act in Wyoming.

The story goes that in 1869, Morris hosted a tea party at her home where she invited local territorial legislator William Bright and obtained a promise from him to introduce the suffrage bill. Considering the Morris cabin was probably only 24 x 26 feet, it is hard to imagine a party being held there. While she and Bright did know each other, as they both lived in South Pass City, any direct involvement by Morris in the drafting and introduction of the suffrage bill cannot be substantiated.

In 1870, shortly after the Wyoming Territorial Legislature granted women the right to vote, Esther Hobart Morris was appointed as the first woman justice of the peace in the nation and she is commonly regarded as a heroine in the women’s suffrage movement – real or imagined.

Learn more about Esther Hobart Morris. 

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Mary “Mollie” Godat Bellamy was Wyoming’s first woman state legislator.  A Democrat, she was first elected to serve a two-year term in the House of Representatives in 1910 and then again in 1918.

Bellamy was a Laramie high school teacher who later served as the superintendent of schools in territorial Albany County. In the Wyoming State Legislature, she focused on issues affecting the welfare of women and children, as well as those that increased funding for the University of Wyoming.

Mary’s husband Charles, a civil engineer, served as the state’s first water commissioner under State Engineer Elwood Mead. “Lake Marie” west of Laramie was so named by Bellamy in honor of his wife while he dubbed another nearby body of water “Bellamy Lake.”

Learn more about Mary Bellamy and about Wyoming water history

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The Blue Front, located on South Front Street, opened as a “Bucket of Blood” style saloon owned by Con Moyers, one of the men hung during the vigilante uprising of October 1868.

Later, the building became the National Theatre, where many plays and performances were stages. Laramie’s courtroom was moved to the National Theatre to seat the world’s first female jurors, as the locations where other court cases had been held were deemed unsuitable for a proper woman to enter. Even then, it took a great deal of convincing that the theatre was respectable and safe. Justice Howe told the men and women of the jury he had “long seen that woman was a victim to the vices, crimes and immoralities of man, with no power to protect and defend herself from these evils.” Jury duty gave women “such powers of protection.”

In 1869, Augustus Trabing moved his headquarters to Laramie in the old Blue Front Theatre. It was a one-story wooden structure that he painted a bright blue, hence the name Blue Front. When Trabing opened the Laramie Grocery Company at the corner of Garfield and South Second Street, the theatre was used as a warehouse.

Learn more about the history of the Blue Front. 

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Eliza Stewart Boyd was the first female’s name to be drawn from the voter’s role to serve on the world’s first jury to include women, which convened in March of 1870 in Laramie, Wyoming.  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.

Stewart Boyd was also the first schoolteacher hired at Laramie’s first public school in 1868. In time, she would also be known for her work in campaigning for the arts, literature and prohibition in Wyoming.

Eliza Stewart Boyd is among the many women memorialized in the Wyoming House for Historic Women, located on 2^nd Street between Garfield and Grand in Laramie. It honors twelve Wyoming women whose lives have impacted the world.

Learn more about Eliza Stewart Boyd

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