“Elizabeth Eaglesfield,” University of Michigan Student Portrait Collection, 1877, Bentley Historical Library.

Why was Clay County girl, Elizabeth Eaglesfield (1853-1940) inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013, and the subject of an Indiana Historical Marker in 2025?

Mostly because in 1875, after legal maneuvering by a Terre Haute attorney, she became the first woman admitted to the Indiana Bar, making her one of the first fifteen women attorneys in the United States.

In 1878, she was one of only two women in the large graduating class of the University of Michigan Law School; and later that year, she hung out her shingle in Grand Rapids. After a sojourn in Indiana, for twenty years Eaglesfield volunteered as a respected club woman and dedicated suffragist in Grand Rapids at the same time she tried to make a living practicing law and flipping real estate sold at sheriff’s auctions.

Most of the few women law graduates of her era did not actually practice, but occupied desks in the backs of their husbands’ law offices. So, with the new century, Eaglesfield took herself, her son, and her career onto the Great Lakes, buying and skippering fruit boats and fighting dramatic legal battles along both sides of Lake Michigan.

In the fast-changing early twentieth century Elizabeth Eaglesfield wanted to live with the exhilaration and possibilities offered to men. A rousing model of determination, persistence, and daring, Elizabeth Eaglesfield engaged her turbulent world for decades. Even her burial site attests to her taste for excitement and spectacle.

Discover the determination, daring, and adventurous spirit of a woman who refused to let the expectations of her time define her life.

Saturday, November 21, 2026 | 2:00 p.m.
Vigo County History Center
Free for OLLI and History Center members; included with regular museum admission.