The Early Female Jewish Members of the Maryland Bar: 1920–1929

Deborah Sweet Eyler

Etta Haynie Maddox, the first female member of the Maryland Bar, was born into a family rooted for generations in Maryland. In the sixteen years following her 1902 bar admission, she was joined by six more women, three of whom also came from long-established American families. The other three were daughters of at least one immigrant, but those parents had come to this country long before their daughters were born. All seven women admitted to the Maryland Bar from 1902 to 1918 were Gentiles.

The decade from 1920 through 1929 marked a significant shift in the ethnic and religious heritages of newly admitted female members of the Maryland Bar. In that time, thirty-six women joined the bar, of whom seventeen were Jewish. The families of fourteen of the Jewish women who joined the Maryland Bar in the 1920s came to this country in the enormous wave of Jewish emigration from Russia and Eastern Europe that began in the 1880s and lasted until the federal government imposed immigration quotas in 1924. Five of the women were born in Russia or Lithuania, then under Russian occupation, and immigrated to this country as newborns or young children. One was born during her parents' journey from Russia to the United States. Eight were “First Generation” Jews, born in the United States to parents who were recent arrivals from Russia or Eastern Europe. And three were “Second Generation” Jews, descended from German or Austrian immigrants.

This Article delves into the lives of six of the Jewish women who came to the Maryland Bar in the 1920s. It explores the shared experiences of the female Jewish lawyers admitted to the Maryland Bar at that time and postulates about why Jewish immigrants and First Generation Jews predominated among the female members of the Maryland Bar in that decade