About 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. Benneson opened her own legal practice—one of the first women in New England to do so—and she was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1894. In Boston, Benneson became friends with the abolitionist and suffragist Lucy Stone.
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