McCulloch, Catharine Waugh, 1862-1945

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.

Born in 1862 in Ransomville, New York as Catherine Gouger Waugh, she entered Rockford College Female Seminary, 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. McCulloch next earned a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1886 from Union College of Law and was admitted to the Illinois Bar that same year. In 1936 she received a Doctorate of Law from Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois.

After her graduation, it was a challenge for Waugh 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. In 1890, 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. She sought equality in her relationship as both a private and political arrangement.

As part of her suffrage work, McCulloch was a member of the Equity Club, legislative chair of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, co-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.

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."

In 1917, McCulloch was appointed as a master in chancery of the Cook County Superior Court. 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.

McCulloch died of cancer in 1945 in Evanston, Illinois at the age of 82.