Victoria Conkling-Whitney

Victoria Conkling-Whitney (1843 - January 25, 1926) was the first woman attorney to practice before the St. Louis Court of Appeals. She said she studied law in self-defense, and urged all women to devote some time to this helpful branch of education. She organized the Woman's State Bar Association, when she was elected president. It was the first organization of its kind in the West, and the object was educational and for mutual improvement in the profession.

Early life Victoria Geraldine Conkling was born in either the latter half of 1842 or first half of 1843 near Columbus, Ohio. Received her earliest education in the university town of Westerville, Ohio. On the death of her father, David Conklin, an attorney, her mother, Cynthia A. Hill, also an attorney, brought her family to Missouri, where a brother had preceded them, and they made Missouri their home. Both her parents were of Colonial ancestry. She was of the seventh generation, on her mother's side, from John Alden and Priscilla De Molineux, who, with her father, mother and brother, all French Huguenots, came to New England with others of that immortal band, in the Mayflower, in 1620. William De Molineux was the tenth, and John Alden the seventh signer of the "Mayflower Compact," the first declaration of equal rights ever promulgated. The Conklins, members of the "Westchester line," came to New England about 1665. That they and their descendants were loyal to the principle of freedom is shown by the fact that there were 145 stalwart men of the Westchester and Long-Island lines of Conklins enrolled in the army and navy of the Revolutionary War. On her mother's side she numbers both the Adams, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bryant, Major-General John Mason, for thirty years Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial Armies, and hero of the Pequot War. Major Daniel Mason also. Whitney was eligible to each and every Colonial and Revolutionary Society in the United States.

Personal life On April 14, 1886, Victoria Conkling married Geordie Z. Whitney (1855-1889), Professor of Mathematics and Secretary of the Faculty at University of Missouri School of Mines.

She died on January 25, 1926, in New York.