Daily Kennebec Journal

THE WOMEN OF LARAMIE

The women of Laramie, Wyoming Territory, about whom so much has recently been heard on account of serving as jurors, are not the kind to be ridiculed with success. They are, like the best women in other places, the leaders in all good works, the promoters of the best society. The Laramie Sentinel has the following about them:

And first, there are very few places which are blessed with such a class of women as Laramie city. In proof of this assertion, we will call attention to a few results of their labors here. We have the finest school-house in the Territory, and the ladies built it. We have the most beautiful church edifice in the Territory, and the ladies did a good share toward building, and the whole of the furnishing of it. We have another good and substantial stone church, pretty well advanced in process of construction, to which they granted, and still are granting material aid. We have an excellent church organ, the common property of the different denominations here, and the ladies bought it. The whole burden, labor and expense of the care of the poor and sick in this city has been cheerfully undertaken and faithfully performed by the ladies. They have been the most enthusiastic supporters of all those social and fraternal associations calculated to build and foster peace and good will among men. Our several Sabbath schools here owe their very origin and existence to the labors and exertions of the ladies of Laramie city. In paying this just tribute to the women of Laramie, we do not detract from the liberality of the men, who have always liberally responded when called upon, but who, busied with their own cares and labors, have gladly turned these public improvements over to the ladies, and most faithfully have they discharged their trust.

Second, there is not, so far as we know, a single woman in this city, who is an advocate of, or a convert to, the doctrine popularly known as woman's rights. We know that not one of those who served as jurors at our late term of court belongs to this class.

And thirdly, these ladies did not seek this position, and only accepted it with diffidence and hesitation, with doubts and misgivings. Very few, if any of them, had ever set a foot in a court-room, and they knew nothing whatever of the machinery of courts, and the intricate and complicated labyrinths through which justice is administered. And they undertook the duty knowing in its discharge they would be subjected to the closest scrutiny, and the strictest rules of propriety, and with the knowledge that notwithstanding their ignorance they would be judged with more strictness and less charity than ordinary male juries.