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. |