Alice G. McGee (1869–1895) was a lawyer included in A Woman of the Century[1] and the second woman admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar,[2] She was born in Warren, Pennsylvania and graduated from Warren High School in 1886.[1] McGee studied for three years as a student in the law office of Wetmore, Noyes & Hinckley and was admitted to the Bar after she turned twenty-one on May 13, 1890.[3][4][1]
Alice G. McGee | |
|---|---|
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| Born | February 10, 1869 |
| Died | August 1, 1895 (aged 26) |
| Known for | Second woman lawyer admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar |
Early life edit
McGee was the only daughter of Joseph A. McGee and Catherine McGee[2] and spent most of her life on a farm.[1] She was educated in music and painting, which McGee had planned to pursue as a career.[1] After graduating from Warren High School in 1886, she worked as a librarian and teacher.[1]
Gaining admission edit
In 1887, she decided to pursue a career in law, and by February 16, 1887, had registered as a student lawyer at Wetmore, Noyes & Hinckley,[1][5] a prominent firm that had argued two cases in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court only a few years earlier.[6][7]
On May 13, 1890, after McGee turned twenty-one, she was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar by Judge Brown.[3] McGee was only the second woman to be admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar after Caroline Burnham Kilgore, who persevered sixteen years before she became a recognized member of the Bar.[8] McGee, on the other hand, only worked as a student lawyer for three years and did not attend law school before gaining admission.[1]
McGee's assent from student lawyer to member of the Bar in three years was not only faster than other women at the time,[8] but is also comparable to her male counterparts.[9] Although law school was an option in 1890, law school was not required, and many were reluctant to admit women.[10][11][12][13]
As a lawyer and actor edit
Although McGee was a successful counselor and pleader,[1] she found the practice of law slow and unprofitable, so she started an acting career, appearing in "The Queen of Sheba" in 1893–1894.[2] She died at the age of twenty-six in 1895.
References edit
- ^ a b c d e f g h i A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied By Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Frances E. Willard & Mary A. Livermore, eds., 1893), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Woman_of_the_Century/Alice_G._McGee.
- ^ a b c Josh Cotton, Trailblazer, Times Observer (Feb. 20, 2021), https://www.timesobserver.com/news/community/2021/02/trailblazer/.
- ^ a b Lelia J. Robinson, Women Lawyers in the United States, 2 Green Bag 68, 87 (Autumn 1998).
- ^ Elizabeth K. Maurer, The Sphere of Carrie Burnham Kilgore, 65 Temp. L. Rev. 827, 849 n. 202.
- ^ She Will Win Sure: Western Pennsylvania's Young Lady Lawyer Is a Beauty, Pittsburgh Dispatch, May 25, 1890, at 6, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/41521879/pittsburgh-dispatch/.
- ^ Richard v. Allen, 117 Pa. 199 (1887).
- ^ Sager v. Galloway, 113 Pa. 500 (1886).
- ^ a b Willard, Winslow & White 1897, p. 373.[full citation needed]
- ^ Kellogg, Frank Billings, Bibliographic Directory of the United States Congress, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/K000065.
- ^ Lewis Ethan Ellis, Frank B. Kellogg and American foreign relations, 1925-1929 (1961).
- ^ Women in Law: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook (1996), https://archive.org/details/womeninlawbiobib0000unse.
- ^ James Willard Hurst, Lawyers in American Society 1750–1966, 50 Marquette L. Rev. 594, 602–603 (1967), https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2502&context=mulr.
- ^ Evolution of the Board, Pennsylvania Board of Examiners, https://www.pabarexam.org/board_information/history/evo.htm