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Part of the American
History & Genealogy Project |
Ada M. Bittenbender 1848 ~
Mrs. Bittenbender, lawyer and reformer,
was born in Asylum, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, August 3,
1848. Her father's family were partly of New England and partly
of German stock; her mother, of New England. Her father served
all during the Civil War, and died soon after its close. Mrs.
Bittenbender's maiden name was Ada M. Cole.
In 1874 she entered as a student of the Pennsylvania State
Normal School, from which she was graduated in 1875. After
graduating, she was elected a member of the faculty and taught
one year. She then entered the Froebel Normal Institute in
Washington, D. C, and graduated from this institute in 1877. The
day on which she graduated she was called to her Alma Mater as
principal and accepted the position, teaching for one year, when
illness prevented her continuing her work. In 1878 she married
Henry Clay Bittenbender, a young lawyer of Bloomsburg,
Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Princeton College.
Soon after their marriage they moved to Osceola, Nebraska. Mrs.
Bittenbender taught school for a short time. In 1879, Mr.
Bittenbender bought the Record published in Osceola. Mrs.
Bittenbender was engaged as editor and served in this capacity
for three years, making an able, fearless, moral, temperance
newspaper of this journal. Mrs. Bittenbender strongly opposed
the granting of saloon licenses. When the Nebraska Woman
Suffrage Association was organized in 1881, she was elected
recording secretary. She with others secured the submission of
the woman suffrage amendment to the constitution in 1881. The
following year she was elected president of the association. In
1881 she became the editor of the Farmer's Alliance paper,
started in Nebraska.
While editing the Record she read law with her husband, and in
1882 passed an examination and was licensed to practice. She was
the first woman admitted to the bar in Nebraska. She became her
husband's law partner, and for many years the firm existed under
the name of H. C. and Ada M. Bittenbender. She secured the
passage of the scientific temperance instruction bill and the
tobacco bill; secured a law giving the mother the guardianship
of her children equally with the father, and several other laws
beneficial to women. She was the author of the excellent
industrial home bill which was enacted by the Nebraska
legislature in 1887.
At the Inter-national Council of Women, held in Washington, D.
C, in 1888 she addressed the council on "Woman in Law." She
represented the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at the
national Capital for many years in urging legislation in the
interest of temperance. In 1888 she was admitted to practice in
the Supreme Court of the United States, and elected an attorney
to the International Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which
she held for some time. She is the author of the chapter on "Woman
in Law" in "Woman's Work in America" and the "National
Prohibitory Amendment Guide." It is through her efforts and
by her untiring devotion to the cause that much of the
beneficial legislation for temperance and the protection of
women and her interests have been obtained.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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