Florence Ellinwood Allen (1884–1966)

Florence Ellinwood Allen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her parents were Corinne Marie and Clarence Emir Allen Sr., a mine manager and later a U.S. Representative from Utah. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where her father worked at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University). He taught Florence Greek and Latin before she was a teenager. After attending New Lyme Institute in Ashtabula, Ohio, she attended Western Reserve and graduated in 1904 with a bachelor's degree in music. She then went to Berlin, Germany, to continue her musical studies. While there, she became a foreign correspondent for a New York-based magazine called the Musical Courier. Her original plan to become a concert pianist was derailed by an injury. She returned to Ohio in 1906 and took a job as the music critic for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer for three years. Her interest in politics and law grew at this time, and she earned a master's degree in political science from Western Reserve in 1908. She wanted to go to law school, but at that time, Western Reserve did not admit women. Determined on a legal career, Allen took special classes and tutorials, and entered the University of Chicago Law School. She transferred to New York University School of Law and paid her tuition by working as a legal investigator and researcher for the New York League for the Protection of Immigrants. In 1913, she obtained her bachelor of laws degree with honors. She returned to Cleveland and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1914. In 1922, Allen was the first woman in the USA to serve as a state supreme court justice. She was also the first woman to serve as a prosecutor and the first to be elected as a trial court judge. She became one of the first two women to serve as a U.S. federal judge in 1934, when she was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and confirmed by the Senate. She retained that seat for 25 years, the last year as chief judge, until her retirement in 1959. Among her published works were This Constitution of Ours (1940), The Treaty as an Instrument of Legislation (1952), and her memoirs, To Do Justly (1965). In 2005, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.