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Female City Attorney

Missouri Has the Only Woman Official Lawyer in This County

Palmyra, Mo., as far as is known, has the only woman city attorney in the United States. 

She is but 23 years old, and, in addition to her practice as a lawyer, is a notary public and a political speaker, who successfully stumped her county during the last Presidential campaign.

In this connection she had occasion to remember her first political speech, for during its delivery the building took fire. She got her first impetus to study law by reading Blackstone, while she was convalescing from an attack of typhoid fever.

Miss Anderson was educated at Centenary Collage, at Palmyra, and graduate there with a degree at the age of eighteen.

After her illness in ’98 she decided to continue in the study of law, and in the fall of ’99 made an application and was admitted to the bar in September, under a very favorable examination, in the Circuit Court of Marion County, with Judge Eby, of Hannibal, Mo., on the bench.

Several months previous to that time she had been appointed notary public and had done a good notary business.

Immediately after her appointment she hung out her shingle, on which were the words: “M. A. Anderson, Notary Public,” not designating her sex.

One afternoon there came into her office a stranger, a traveling man, and asked if Mr. Anderson was in. Thinking, of course, he meant her father, who also an attorney, she told him he would have to wait a few minutes.

He did so, and as soon as her father returned he stated that he wanted a notary public to take an affidavit, and asked if his stenographer could not witness the signature. When informed that the lady whom he had taken for the stenographer was the notary, the look on his face was a study for an artist. He was so surprised that when taking the oath he was decidedly frustrated. He said it the “first one” he had ever seen.

After her admittance to the bar, Miss Anderson’s work, at first, consisted mainly of drawing up papers such as deeds and petitions, and in assisting her father in his cases.

At the last city election, at the solicitation of her friends, she decided to run for the office of city attorney. She did so, and was elected. Her work in this capacity has been very satisfactory. She has not lost a single case.

During February of the present year she was enrolled in the Supreme Court on the motion of Sam S. Jeffries, assistant attorney general of the State.

During the national campaign in the fall of 1900, she was asked to take the platform by the Democratic central committee, and did so, making speeches for three weeks before election.

She was well received with large crowds and a great deal of enthusiasm, often talking to several hundred people, whereas the usual audience was twenty or thirty. The average length of her speeches was one hour and thirty minutes. She also delivered several speeches outside of her county, and was invited to campaign in St. Louis.

Her first speech was delivered in the basement of a fine rural church.

On that night the weather was very stormy. There was a hard rain, with intense lightning and thunder. Miss Anderson drove six miles through the storm and on reaching the house found a good sized crowd awaiting her.

It was here that the building caught fire. The blaze was finally extinguished. That was the only political speech made in the county that night, other speeches being postponed on account of the severe storm.

Miss Anderson says that she is very much interested in her profession, and expects to make it a life work. She has been treated with the utmost respect and consideration by the profession. She says:

“I consider the work to be perfectly proper and becoming to any womanly woman, and am sure that law is a subject on which every woman as well as man should be informed, both for the satisfaction of possessing the knowledge and because it prepares her to understand and carry on any business or estate which may be left in her care without having to resort entirely to the advice and assistance of others, which so frequently proves fatal.”

Miss Anderson was born in the town which she now city attorney. Her father is a practicing lawyer in Palmyra. Her grandfather, Col. Thomas L. Anderson, a Kentuckian by birth, was for years one of the most prominent lawyers in the state.

He was a direct descendant of William Randolph of Turkey Island. He married a Miss Rusella Easton, of St. Charles, Mo., a daughter of Col. Thomas Easton, the second delegate in Congress from the Territory of Missouri, and one of the State’s first attorney generals.

Col. Anderson was Presidential elector for William H. Harrison, in 1840, and for Henry Clay in 1844. In 1844 he was elected as a delegate to a convention to make a new constitution for the State. He represented Marion County in the Missouri legislature in 1840, and in 1856 was elected to Congress from what is now the First Congressional district.