Esther Hobart Morris

Esther Hobart Morris (August 8, 1814 – April 3, 1902) was the first woman justice of the peace in the United States. A mother of three boys, she began her tenure as justice in South Pass City, Wyoming, on February 14, 1870, serving a term of less than nine months. The Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners appointed Morris as justice of the peace after the previous justice, R. S. Barr, resigned in protest of Wyoming Territory's passage of the women's suffrage amendment in December 1869.

Popular stories and historical accounts, buttressed by state and federal public monuments, point to Morris as a leader in the passage of Wyoming's suffrage amendment. However, Morris' leadership role in the legislation is disputed. It is clear, however, that she had strongly encouraged and influenced South Pass City saloon owner William H. Bright, then a representative to the Wyoming Territorial Constitutional Convention, to introduce in 1869 a women's suffrage clause into the territorial constitution. When the constitution was approved by territorial Governor John A. Campbell in December 1869, Wyoming became the first jurisdiction in the United States to grant women the right to vote, a right which was not granted women nationally until 1920.

Esther Hobart was born in Tioga County, New York, on August 8, 1814. Orphaned at an early age, she apprenticed to a seamstress and ran a successful millinery business out of her grandparents' home, "making hats, and buying and selling goods for women". Moreover, Hobart agitated as a young woman against slavery, reportedly during one incident countering efforts of slavery advocates who threatened to destroy a church that supported abolition.

Eight years into her millinery business, Hobart married Artemus Slack in 1841. Three years later, just short of her 30th birthday, her husband died. Morris subsequently moved to Illinois, where her late husband, a civil engineer, had acquired property. She encountered legal roadblocks, however, in settling her husband's affairs because women were not allowed to own or inherit property. Thereafter she moved to Peru, Illinois, where in 1850 she married a local merchant, John Morris. In the spring of 1868 her husband, along with Esther's son from her previous marriage, Archibald "Archy" Slack, moved to a gold rush community at South Pass City, Wyoming Territory, to open a saloon.

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