FOSTER, Mrs. Judith Ellen

FOSTER, HORTON, WARREN, PIERCE

Posted By: Administrator
Date: 12/30/2001 at 07:38:16

The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans
Daughters of America; or Women of the Century
Chapter XXI: Women Lawyers

MRS. JUDITH ELLEN FOSTER should be mentioned as among the lawyers who have shown woman's power to plead successfully. She was among those speakers in the temperance campaign who secured victory for prohibition in Iowa in 1882.
Miss Frances E. Willard gives a fine sketch of the lawyer, MRS. JUDITH ELLEN FOSTER, in "Our Union," for September, 1881, from which the following facts are learned:—
She is the daughter of Rev. Jotham Horton, a Methodist clergyman, born in Boston in 1789, and of a Cape Cod mother, who was a descendant of the Revolutionary General Warren. Her father was a very Boanerges, but, says Miss Willard, "Mrs. Foster's mother was quite a different type, the daughter of a sea-captain, reared in the quiet of a New England farm; she never met the world till called to stand beside this fiery champion of the Cross. Beautiful in face and form, and graceful in manner, she was the ideal complement of her husband. When Judith (for I can but call her thus, believing that the Iowa liquor traffic shall yet turn out to be her Holofernes) was not quite seven years old, she lost this lovely mother. Born at Lowell, Mass., November 8, 1840, motherless at seven, and an orphan at twelve years of age, Judith Ellen's short life had already comprehended the most significant vicissitudes, when her eldest sister, Mrs. Pierce, wife of a wealthy business man of Boston, received the young girl into her home and directed her education, first in the public schools of Boston, then at Charlestown Female Seminary, and last at the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, Lima, N.Y. Her musical education was carried on in Boston, under the best teachers. After leaving school she taught briefly, but at twenty years of age (1860) she was married to a promising young merchant of that city.
"Concerning this painful episode in her history, the following facts are furnished by a friend: 'This union, desired and approved by mutual friends, promised naught but joy and blessedness. But clouds soon gathered, and after years of poverty and toil and wanderings to and fro, and vain attempts to cover up and bear the shame that came because she bore his name, nothing was left of this sad marriage but two children for her to love and rear. In the home of a brother she put on widow's weeds, sadder far than those that come at death.'
"Having secured a divorce, she was married to Hon. E. C. Foster, who is a prominent lawyer and politician of Iowa, a life-long temperance man and earnest, working Christian.
"She read law first for his entertainment, and afterwards by his suggestion and under his supervision she pursued a systematic course of legal study with, however, no thought of admission to the bar. She read, with her babies about her, and instead of amusing herself with fashion plates or fiction, such learned tomes as Blackstone and Kent, Bishop and Story. She never had an ambition for public speaking or public life. Although reared in the Methodist Church she had never, until about the time of the crusade, heard a woman preach or lecture, but when that trumpet blast resounded, she, in common with her sisters, responded to the call, and lifted up her voice in protest against the iniquity of the drink traffic. Her acceptance with the people just at the time when she had completed her legal studies seemed a providential indication, and her husband said, 'If you can talk before an audience you could before a court or jury,' and he insisted on her being examined for admission to the bar. Prior to this time she had prepared pleadings and written arguments for the courts, but without formal admission she could not personally appear. She was examined, admitted, and took the oath to 'support the Constitution and the laws. This triumph won the approval of friends and the increased hatred of the liquor party, who knew it meant not only warfare upon the temperance platform, but in the legal forum also. The night of the day on which she was admitted to practice, saw her home in Clinton, Iowa, in flames. There was little doubt that the fire was kindled by two liquor sellers whom Mr. Foster had prosecuted, and who had just returned from the county jail. Mrs. Foster was the first woman admitted to practice in the State Supreme Court. She has recently defended a woman under sentence of death, and after a ten days' trial, in which our lady lawyer made the closing argument, the verdict of the jury was modified to imprisonment for life. Mrs. Foster enjoys the absolute confidence and support of her husband in her legal and temperance work. He was its instigator, and more than any other rejoices in it.
"Mrs. Foster has lost two little girls. Two sons remain, one of whom is a student in the Northwestern University at Evanston, Ill., and another in the grammar school at Clinton, Iowa. In her own home Mrs. Foster is universally honored, and for her beloved Iowa she has grandly wrought from the beginning until now, when, more by her exertions than those of any other individual, the Constitutional Amendment has been placed before the people. Mrs. Foster's life since the crusade of 1874 is part and parcel of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She has never been absent from one of our national conventions; and her quick brain, ready and pointed utterance, and rare knowledge of parliamentary forms have added incalculably to the success of these great meetings. There is not a State at the North in which our cause is not to-day more powerful than it would have been but for her logic and her eloquence. Whether making her great two-hours' argument for the Constitutional Amendment, as she did night after night for successive months in the Northwest, or following the intricacies of debate in a convention, conducting a prayer meeting between the sessions, leading the music of an out-door meeting, answering Dr. Crosby at Tremont Temple, Boston, pleading for woman's ballot in Iowa, or for prohibition in Washington; whether playing with her boys at home, reading Plato in the cars, preaching the gospel from a dry-goods box on the street corner of her own town, or speaking in the great tabernacle at Chautauqua, Mrs. Foster is always witty, wise, and kind, and thorough mistress of the situation. Her husband's heart doth safely trust in her, and her boys glory in a mother who cannot only say with Cornelia of Rome, 'these are my jewels,' but whose great heart reaches out to restore to the rifled casket of many another woman's home, whence strong drink has stolen them, these gems of priceless cost. Best of all, she loves the Lord Jesus Christ, and above her chief joy, desires and labors to build up His Kingdom on the earth."