Esther Dunshee Bower
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September 1879
Esther Dunshee Bower | |
|---|---|
 Esther A. Dunshee, from a 1922 newsletter | |
| Born | Esther A. Dunshee September 1879 Charles City, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | (aged 82) Conway, Arkansas, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Chicago-Kent College of Law |
| Occupations | Lawyer, activist |
Esther A. Dunshee Bower (September 1879 – October 13, 1962) was an American lawyer and activist based in Chicago. She was a co-founder of the Illinois League of Women Voters.
Esther A. Dunshee was born in Charles City, Iowa, and raised in Wilmette, Illinois after 1887,[1] the daughter of Edmond Philo Dunshee and Emerine Hamilton Hurd Dunshee.[2] She graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1902.[3]
Career
Dunshee was a probate lawyer with the firm Good, Childs, Bobb, and Wescott. She was president of the Women's Bar Association of Illinois from 1920 to 1921.[4] She was also the second woman elected to the Wilmette Village Board, and a trustee of the Congregational Church of Wilmette. During World War I, Dunshee went to France with the YMCA, and worked in a canteen in Le Mans.[5]
Dunshee was active in the women's suffrage movement, and a co-founder of the Illinois League of Women Voters.[6] For almost two decades,[7][8][9] she and two other women lawyers, Kate Kane Rossi and Catherine Waugh McCulloch, were active in supporting the Women's Jury Bill in Illinois,[10] which allowed women to serve on juries after it became a law in 1939.[11] She also worked for laws protecting the economic rights of married women.[3][12] and taught English classes for women at the Northwestern University Settlement.[13][14] She served on national committees of the League of Women Voters,[15] and presented on legal topics at national League events.[16]
Dunshee published a state-by-state survey of women's rights in 1924.[3]
