Catharine Waugh McCulloch

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.

Early life and education Catharine Waugh was born in New York to Susan Gouger and Abraham Miller Waugh. She was of French and Irish ancestry. Raised in Illinois, she graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in 1882, where she wrote a thesis on women's wages and earned both a B.A. and M.A. degree. Waugh then attended Chicago's Union College of Law (now Northwestern Pritzker School of Law). After graduating and passing the bar in 1886, Waugh sought employment in Chicago but faced gender discrimination. She returned to Rockford, Illinois and started her own practice.

Marriage and family In 1890, Catharine Waugh married her former law school classmate, Frank Hathorn McCulloch. They moved to Chicago and merged practices to form the law firm of McCulloch and McCulloch. Catharine sought equality in her relationship as both a private and political arrangement. According to letters she sent to colleagues, she believed her marriage to McCulloch helped advance her career. She raised four children: Hugh Waugh, Hathorn Waugh, Catharine Waugh, and Frank Waugh.

In 1894, McCulloch and fellow members of the Chicago Woman's Club 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 an attempt to challenge McCulloch's position, the attorney for McCulloch's male opponent claimed that women were ineligible to hold all constitutional offices in the state because they were not eligible voters.

In 1916, she was the first woman to be nominated by a major party as a presidential elector. She led the Democratic ticket statewide, winning 950,229 votes — by far the most ever won in an election by a woman to that point. But the Republican victory in Illinois prevented her from actually serving in the Electoral College.

In 1917, she 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 at the age of 82. Catharine W. McCulloch Park in Evanston is named for her.

Publications Bittenbender, Ada M. "Women in Law," in Farmer, Lydia Hoyt. The national exposition souvenir: what America owes to women Buffalo: C. W. Moulton, 1893. Pages 390–408. Drysdale, William. "The Woman Lawyer," in Helps for ambitious girls New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co., c1900. Pages 180–208. "Law," in Training for the professions and allied occupations: facilities available to women in the United States. New York: Bureau of Vocational Information, 1924. Pages 427–450. McCulloch, Catharine Waugh. "Women as Law Clerks" manuscript. c1887. (12 pages). Bureau of Vocational Information (New York). Records, 1908–1932: A Finding Aid Mr. Lex, Or The Legal Status of Mother and Child. Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1899, 85 pp.