A Woman's Rights

Wyoming legislators passed the Wyoming Suffrage Act of 1869, giving women in the territory the right to vote. They hoped that suffrage would stimulate migration by women to female-poor Wyoming.

On 14 Feb 1870, the Board of County Commissioners appointed Esther Morris (1812-1902) to be the first woman justice of the peace in the United States after the previous justice resigned in protest to passage of the women's suffrage amendment.

Esther's husband John (died 1877) had a reputation as "a brawler, an idler, and a drunk."