McCulloch, Catharine Waugh, 1862-1945

<p>Catharine Gouger Waugh McCulloch (June 4, 1862 – April 20, 1945) was an American lawyer, suffragist, and reformer. She actively lobbied for women's suffrage at the local, state, and national levels as a leader in the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, Chicago Political Equality League, and National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was the first woman elected Justice of the Peace in Illinois.</p>

<p>Catharine Waugh was born in New York state to Susan Gouger and Abraham Miller Waugh. She was of French and Irish ancestry. Raised in Illinois, she graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in 1882, where she wrote a thesis on women's wages and earned both a B.A. and M.A. degree. Waugh then attended Chicago's Union College of Law (now Northwestern Pritzker School of Law). After graduating and passing the bar in 1886, Waugh sought employment in Chicago but faced gender discrimination. She returned to Rockford, Illinois and started her own practice.</p>

<p>In 1890, Catharine Waugh married her former law school classmate, Frank Hawthorn McCulloch. They moved to Chicago and merged practices to form the law firm of McCulloch and McCulloch. Catharine sought equality in her relationship as both a private and political arrangement. According to letters she sent to colleagues, she believed her marriage to McCulloch helped advance her career. She raised four children: Hugh Waugh, Hathorn Waugh, Catharine Waugh, and Frank Waugh.</p>

<p>McCulloch was a member of the Equity Club, a correspondence network founded in 1887 to provide support, friendship, and advice among women lawyers across the country. In 1888, McCulloch unsuccessfully ran for state's attorney on the Prohibition party ticket.</p>

<p>McCulloch began serving as the legislative chair of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association in 1890. After the Illinois Supreme Court upheld a law granting women the right to vote in school district elections in 1891, McCulloch worked on a bill that would ensure women's suffrage for local and presidential elections in the state of Illinois. McCulloch and her colleagues at the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association actively lobbied for the bill from 1893 to 1913, even organizing train and automobile tours to rally suffrage supporters across the state. McCulloch's public-oriented methods of mobilizing supporters through rallies and publications reflected the style of many clubwomen, settlement-house workers, and other Progressive Era activists who sought suffrage as a means to advance other reform efforts. Her approach contrasted with that of more conservative members of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association like Grace Wilbur Trout, who preferred more quiet and diplomatic lobbying.</p>

<p>In 1894, McCulloch and fellow members of the Chicago Woman's Club founded the Chicago Political Equity League to campaign for municipal suffrage. In addition to her suffrage work, McCulloch advocated for maternalist reform measures. For example, she championed the passage of a law in 1901 that gave women equal guardianship with their husbands over their children. In 1905, she helped raise the age of consent for girls from 14 to 16 years.</p>

<p>McCulloch was elected Justice of the Peace in Evanston, Illinois in 1907 (and re-elected in 1909), making her the first woman elected to that office in Illinois. While a Justice of the Peace, she made national headlines by agreeing to conduct egalitarian marriage ceremonies in which she omitted the word "obey" from the ritualized words the woman was supposed to say; at that time, the man pledged to "love, honor and cherish" while the woman pledged to "love, honor and obey."</p>

<p>In 1917, she was appointed as a master in chancery of the Cook County Superior Court. She became known for her advocacy in working to eliminate or modify marriage and divorce laws that discriminated against women, and she worked to create uniformity of such laws in all states.</p>

<p>She was the legal adviser for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (which became the League of Women Voters in 1920 after passage of the 19th Amendment) and was its first vice president. She also served as the legal adviser for the National Women's Christian Temperance Union.</p>

<p>McCulloch died of cancer in 1945 at the age of 82. Catharine W. McCulloch Park in Evanston is named for her.</p>

<p>Catharine Waugh McCulloch was born in 1862 in Ransomville, New York to Susan Gouger and Abraham Waugh. She married Frank McCulloch in 1890 and had four children, Hugh Waugh (1891), Hawthorn Waugh (1899), Catharine Waugh (1901) and Frank Waugh (1905). She died in 1945 in Evanston, Illinois.</p>

<p>In 1878 Catharine entered Rockford College Female Seminary, Rockford, Illinois (now Rockford University) and graduated first in her class with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1882. She stayed on in Rockford to earn her Master of Arts degree. Ambitiously, McCulloch continued her impressive educational career and received a Degree of Bachelor of law in 1886 from Union College of Law (now Northwestern University Law School) and was admitted to the Illinois Bar that same year. In 1936 she received a Doctorate of Law from Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois.</p>

<p>After her graduation, it was a challenge for McCulloch to find a position at an established law firm and in 1887 she returned to Rockford and opened her own law practice with support from members of the Equity Club, the first association of women lawyers in the country which McCulloch was instrumental in establishing while she was a law student. McCulloch’s client base consisted of women tormented by problems relating to lack of legal status; wage discrimination, divorce, probate, child custody, abuse and through representing these issues, she emerged as a leading figure among the advocates for the women’s movement and a leading advocate of woman suffrage in Illinois.</p>

<p>In addition to their matrimonial union, Frank and Catharine opened a law partnership in Chicago where they continued to work on women’s rights and in 1889, Catharine practiced before the United States Supreme court.</p>

<p>She effected change in the city of Evanston, the state of Illinois and the entire country through her involvement with the Legislative Committee of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (IESA) which she was part of for 22 years. She devised a strategy to allow women to vote for president and in other elections not constitutionally limited to men. This bill was introduced in 1893 and every year thereafter.</p>

<p>She framed the legislation so it neatly sidestepped the state Constitution, allowing women to vote for presidential electors and other government officers not mentioned in the Constitution. Illinois was the first state east of Mississippi River to pass such a law and others soon followed, leading to the universal suffrage amendment in 1920. From 1917 to 1925 McCulloch was President of the Women’s Democratic Club of Illinois, nominated as their first president, working for the enactment of women’s suffrage and prohibition.</p>

<p>In addition, McCulloch wrote a bill that strengthened rape laws and raised the age of consent in Illinois from fourteen to sixteen. She co-authored a book with Frank McCulloch called <i>A Manual of the Law of Will Contest in Illinois</i> (1929) and wrote several plays including Mr Lex (1899), which called attention to a woman’s need for greater protection against abusive or alcoholic husbands, and <i>Bridget’s Sister</i> (1911) a suffragist comedy play highlighting the need for women to join forces and campaign for tighter laws protecting women and the laws relating to mother and child.</p>