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 … Continue reading Martha Symons Boies Atkinson →

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 … Continue reading Esther Hobart Morris →

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 … Continue reading Mary Godat Bellamy →

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 … Continue reading The Blue Front →

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 … Continue reading Eliza Stewart Boyd →

Grace Raymond Hebard was not the first woman in Wyoming to break the “glass ceiling” of her time, but her achievements were quite remarkable! Not only was Hebard the first woman admitted to the Wyoming State Bar in 1898 and the first woman to practice law before the Wyoming Supreme Court, she was also an … Continue reading Grace Raymond Hebard →

Nellie Tayloe Ross was the first woman in the United States to serve as governor of a state, plus the first female director of the United State Mint. Ross was elected governor of Wyoming in 1924, when her husband, incumbent governor Democrat William Bradford Ross, died just prior to re-election. While in office from 1924-1926, she did … Continue reading Nellie Tayloe Ross →

Lillian Heath was Wyoming’s first female physician. A native of Rawlins, she opened her practice at her parents’ home at age 27 in 1893, and was reportedly the only woman to attend the 1895 American Medical Association’s convention held in Denver. Heath carried a pistol when she went out on house calls, and her skills ran … Continue reading Lillian Heath →

Estelle Reel was the first woman in the nation elected to statewide public office as the Wyoming’s Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1894. Although she had never sought public office before, the state’s Republican party gave her the nomination and Reel did not disappoint! She campaigned like a champion, traveling the state from corner to … Continue reading Estelle Reel →

May Gorslin Preston Slosson served as the chaplain at the nearly all-male Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, Wyoming from 1899-1903. In 1880, she was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University and the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in philosophy in the United States. She and her husband, Edwin Emery Slosson, moved to … Continue reading May Preston Slosson →