Catharine Waugh McCulloch (1862-1945)
In 1907 Catharine McCulloch, lawyer, suffrage activist, and writer was elected justice of the peace in Evanston, Illinois, the first woman in the state to hold this position. She was elected by a majority of approximately 1,300 votes over her male opponent who made gender an issue in his campaign. McCulloch was later re-elected, serving until 1911. Women were barred from voting in these elections, so McCulloch was twice elected to office by male voters. Before she received her appointment lawyers tried to block her taking office. They said that “electing a woman to even the smallest judicial office was an unwise precedent.” (Wilson, p. 13) They did not succeed. McCulloch’s election encouraged other women to seek judicial positions. ( Wilson, 16) Earlier, in 1888, she had been nominated by the Prohibition Party for State’s Attorney as part of the party’s state and national ticket. Although she lost, McCulloch ran two hundred votes ahead of the ticket. In 1916 she was chosen by the State Democratic Convention as one of the presidential electors to vote for Woodrow Wilson.
Party Affiliation
Prohibition; Democratic
Photograph:
Resources:
Many of Catharine Waugh McCulloch’s papers have been preserved in the Schlesinger Library.
Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Autobiography (n.p., n.d)(McCulloch Papers)
Julia Wilson, “Catharine Waugh McCulloch: Attorney, Suffragist and Justice of the Peace.” http://womenslegalhistory.stanford.edu/papers/cwc.final.pdf
[Additional notes]:
Married and the mother of four children, McCulloch authored several books, lobbied on numerous policy issues including women’s equal right to act as guardians for their children and was active in many organizations including the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the League of Women Voters, the ACLU, the Free Trade League, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Woman’s Clubs of Chicago and Evanston. In 1894 McCulloch worked on the successful campaign to elect Lucy Louisa Flower as the first woman member of the University of Illinois board of trustees. ( Wilson, p. 32)In 1917 she was appointed master in chancery of the Cook County Superior Court. In this work she helped to eliminate another barrier experienced by women attorneys.