Cora Agnes Benneson

Cora Agnes Benneson (June 10, 1851 – June 8, 1919) was an American attorney, lecturer, and writer. She was one of the first women to practice law in New England. Benneson was raised in Quincy, Illinois, to parents involved in local politics, religious organizing, and philanthropy; her parents regularly invited prominent guests to their home, including the writers and philosophers Amos Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Benneson began her university studies in 1875 at the University of Michigan, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1878, a Bachelor of Laws in 1880, and a Master of Arts in 1883. After earning her master's degree, she was admitted to the bars of Illinois and Michigan.

From 1883 to 1885, Benneson traveled the world to learn about legal cultures, and in particular how they affected women, while sometimes taking what one scholar has called nativist or stereotypical views of those cultures. When she returned to the United States, Benneson undertook a nationwide lecture tour to speak about her travels and observations. In 1886, she briefly worked as an editor of West Publishing's law reports before taking up a history fellowship at Bryn Mawr College under then-professor Woodrow Wilson.

In 1888, Benneson moved to Boston, where she opened a law practice and continued to write and lecture. She was licensed to practice law in Massachusetts in 1894 and was appointed a special commissioner to the Council Chamber by the Massachusetts Governor Frederic T. Greenhalge in 1895. A member of various organizations, Benneson was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1899 and elected secretary of its Social and Economic Science Section in 1900. She turned her attention to opening a school for the "Americanization of Foreigners" in 1918. She died in Boston on June 8, 1919, at the age of 67, the day before her diploma to open the school arrived.

Cora Agnes Benneson was born on June 10, 1851, in Quincy, Illinois, to Electa Ann (née Park) and Robert Smith Benneson. Robert was born in Newark, Delaware to the Rev. Thomas Benneson; he moved to Philadelphia and then Quincy, where he became a successful local businessman and a politician. He served as an alderman, mayor during the Civil War (during which time he prevented the city from going insolvent by paying its debts from his own pocket), and president of the city's board of education for 14 years. Electa, who descended from Richard Park—one of the original proprietors of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1635—was an educator and philanthropist. Electa and Robert were both religious and helped to establish the Unitarian Church in Illinois.

According to her biographer, the mathematician and sociologist Mary Esther Trueblood, Benneson was raised in "a large mansion situated above a series of terraces, surrounded by trees and shrubs, and commanding a magnificent view of fourteen miles of the Mississippi". The youngest of four sisters (and a cousin whom her parents raised), Benneson "was a sturdy child, orderly, accurate, self-reliant, ambitious, and persevering". By the age of 8, Benneson was writing and editing a magazine with her sisters and cousin called The Experiment. She was proficient in reading Latin at 12 and "[able] to get at the pith of an argument" and hold her own in conversation.

During her adolescence, Benneson's parents entertained famous personages at their home, including the writers and philosophers Amos Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson; the latter inspired Benneson's further study of philosophy and law. Benneson completed the equivalent of high school studies at the Quincy Academy at 15. That same year, she joined the Friends in Council, a reading group in philosophy composed of prominent Quincy women. When she was 18 years old, Benneson graduated as the valedictorian of the Quincy Female Seminary. She then taught English and composition at the school from 1869 to 1872.

In 1875, Benneson began her studies at the University of Michigan (then called Michigan University) in Ann Arbor, which had only begun accepting women as students in 1870. As an undergraduate student, Benneson was part of a community of women who would go on to have successful careers, including her friend Alice Freeman Palmer. She was a successful public speaker—defending, in her first year, the proposition that Homer was the author of the Iliad—and served as the first female editor on the editorial board of The Chronicle, which was at the time the university's leading newspaper. Benneson completed her degree in three years, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1878.

Upon graduation, Benneson applied to Harvard Law School with the written recommendations of five alumni. Harvard rejected her application, asserting that "the equipments were too limited to make suitable provision for receiving women". In 1880, she returned to her alma mater to study at its law school, where she was one of two women in her class. While there, Benneson studied under the Michigan Supreme Court Justices Thomas M. Cooley and James V. Campbell. She was elected class secretary and was an officer of the debate society; she also served as a judge for the Illinois Moot Court. She obtained her Bachelor of Laws in 1880 and a Master of Arts in 1883. After earning her master's degree, she was admitted to the bars of Illinois and Michigan.