Carrie (Caroline) Burnham Kilgore (1839-1909) was a woman of firsts. Born in a remote Vermont village, at age twelve, she was taken out of school when her parents died and put to work in the family woolen mill. But her desire to learn was too strong.
At fifteen, she began teaching at local schools and doing domestic work to pay the tuition to study the classics at a local academy and then two seminaries. Illness from typhoid, sent her to live with her sister in Wisconsin, where she recovered and took up teaching again. When a male high school teacher fell ill, she took over his classes in the classics. She also taught French, German, drawing, and painting.
Determined to become a doctor, she set out for New York City where she studied at the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College, was in the first female class at Bellevue Hospital Clinic, and earned her medical degree in 1865, the first for a woman in New York State. From there, she went to Boston and studied physical culture and worked as a physician’s assistant.
Not satisfied, she moved to Philadelphia, where she taught, introducing physical culture classes to the city schools. There she married her husband, Damon Kilgore, a lawyer, and began studying the law under him.
She was an ardent advocate for women’s right to vote, serving as vice-president of the National Women Suffrage Association. In 1871, Kilgore attempted to vote in a local city election. When she was refused, she sued and took the case all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where she became to first woman to argue a case, but lost.
Not to be deterred, she applied for admission to the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. It took her ten years, but in 1881, she won admission as the first woman and graduated at age forty-five in 1883 becoming the first female lawyer in Pennsylvania.
Her ten year pursuit of entry into Penn became a cause celeb. The New York Times covered her attempts. The New York Herald described her as “containing within herself talent enough to run a sewing machine or a law college” (quoted in Busnell)
Upon her graduation from Penn law school, she again had to battle to be allowed to practice law at the various courts in the city. In 1885, she argued before the Pennsylvania legislature for women to be permitted to argue cases before the supreme court. The legislature passed the law. and she became the first woman allowed to bring cases before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and thereby all courts in Pennsylvania. In 1886, she was named to the state chancery, the first woman to be so, and in 1890, became the fourth woman to win the right to argue cases before the US Supreme Court.
When in 1888, her husband died, leaving her with two young daughters support, Kilgore was able to take over his law practice.
Her arguments for the rights of women deserve to be remembered.
From her 1875 speech at the Women’s Rights Convention, Washington DC
“The legislators stand between woman and God, and that if woman attempts to maintain the rights God gave her, she is prevented by the mandate of man. In this country men are the legislators, judges, &c., therefore the Government is despotic. Woman is held in slavery, and can do nothing more than what man permits.”
From her argument before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court 1871
Writings of Carrie Kilgore
Woman suffrage : the argument of Carrie S. Burnham before Chief Justice Reed, and Associate Justices Agnew, Sharswood and Mercur, of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in banc, on the third and fourth of April, 1873 ; with an appendix containing the opinion of Hon. George Sharswood and a complete history of the case ; also, a compilation of the laws of Pennsylvania touching the rights of women. Available from the Library of Congress Digital Collection
Learn more about Carrie Kilgore
Angels and Amazons: A Hundred Years of American Women by Inez Hayes Irwin (1933)
Biographical Sketch of Carolyn Burnham Kilgore by Mark Bushnell
CARRIE BURNHAM KILGORE | PHILADELPHIA WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH ALL-STAR by The Philadelphia Citizen
“Well may our statesmen tremble for the future of this Republic, when the fundamental principles of free government can thus be ignored with impunity.”
Carrie Kilgore Quoted in Angels and Amazons by Mary Clark
Wow a powerful post about a powerful woman. So much passion and purpose!