Emma Melinda Gillett

The January issue of the Women Lawyers’ Journal contained a notice of an accident suffered by Miss Emma M. Gillett, and a statement that she was bearing her enforced idleness philosophically. On Sunday morning, January 23d, Miss Gillett passed away. Here death has taken from the ranks of the women lawyers in the United State a noteworthy figure, one of the pioneers, one who was an ardent suffrage worker in the days when to believe in the right of women and to work to secure those rights was to stamp oneself as eccentric to say the least. Ridicule was the common portion of those brave women.

Miss Gillett was one of the founders of the Washington College of Law. The story of the founding of that law class by Mrs. Mussey and Miss Gillet was known to all women lawyers. Miss Gillett lived to see the school, established primarily for women, grow into a large law college where the attendance of men equals that of women – an institution that has sent its graduates to all parts of the United States and to foreign countries where they have achieved distinction in various posts of honor.

Miss Gillett was ever ready to help the backward or timid law student over the rough places. Something of her help and inspiration has gone into the making of many lawyers. In this sense she is not dead.

When, after many years arduous service Dean Mussey was compelled through ill health to relignquish her position as active head of the college, Miss Gillett became Dean, and it was during her Deanship that a home was purchased for the college. She had foreseen the necessity for purchasing a building which would accommodate the rapidly growing classes, and her sense of property values guided her so well in the choice of a location that the increase in value at the time the recent move to larger quarters was necessary, aided materially in the purchase of the new building.

Miss Gillett was a forceful character. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have had her as a teacher will never forget her caustic comments on dower and some of the other provisions of the common law whereby women were "protected." She had ever the courage of her convictions. Hear her remarks before the Section of Legal Education of the American Bar Association at Cincinnati, Ohio, August 31, 1921: "Mr. Chairman and Members of the Section of Legal Education: I have endeavored to feel that I could say that I came up here on the platform to speak on this question with great diffidence, but as this is the third year I have come to a meeting of the American Bar Association simply in order

To attend one meeting of this section, I can only say that it is a great pleasure and a great privilege for me to speak to you. * * * Why do people study law. Is it for the privilege of being admitted to the bar? That is one reason, but it is not the only reason. There is the cultural reason for the study of law outside of this question. * * * I want to say, as I said a year ago, that the woman’s day is here. The women are not yet at the top. Does the road wind upward all the way? Yes, to the weary end, and we women who are studying law and practicing law are not at the top yet. It is possibly just as well that the road should wind somewhat as we go up."

Miss Gillett was born in Princeton, Wisconsin, July 30, 1852. After the death of her father the family returned to Girard, Penna., where Miss Gillett was educated and later taught school. In 1880, having heard that Belva Lockwood had studied law in the District of Columbia, she came to Washington to study, but found that the National University, where Mrs. Lockwood had been graduated, had closed the doors to women. Undaunted, she entered Howard University, was graduated in 1883 and admitted to the bar that same year. She was the first woman to be appointed notary public by the President of the United States.

After admission to the Bar she formed a partnership with Watson J. Newton which continued until the death of Mr. Newton in 1913. At one time she was connected with the District Title Insurance Company and was later Vice President of the Realty Appraisal & Title Company.

One of her activities – one very dear to her heart – was the establishment of a woman’s club (the Wimondaughsis) in the District.

Miss Gillett was Vice President for the District of Columbia of the American Bar Association in 1992; was President of the State Suffrage Association of the District; President of the Women’s Bar Association in 1921, and at the time of her death was Dean Emeritus of the Washington College of Law and Chairman of the Legal Branch of the National Woman’s Party.

Memorial services will be held on Sunday afternoon, May 15^th, by the various associations with which she was affiliated.

The spray of roses which the National Association of Women Lawyers placed upon her casket was emblematic of the affection and admiration of women lawyers throughout the country for Miss Gillett.

"Peace, rest, and sleep are all we know of death,
And all we dream of comfort."