Florence Ellinwood Allen

Jurist and women's suffrage activist, born in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The daughter of the first woman admitted to Smith College, she first studied music but decided to take up law instead, graduating from New York University Law School in 1913. Admitted to the Ohio bar (1914), she served as legal counsel for the suffragist movement, became assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County (1919), was elected a common pleas court judge (1920), and won election to the Ohio Supreme Court (1922). Appointed to the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (1934), she served for 25 years. Working assiduously for women's rights, in 1958 she became the first woman to sit on a general federal bench and the first on a court of last resort. She retired from the bench the next year. Despite strong support from women's groups, she never received the US Supreme Court nomination she sought. In 1965 she published the autobiographical To Do Justly.

Florence Ellinwood Allen (March 23, 1884 - September 12, 1966) was raised in Cleveland, where she attended Case Western Reserve University and joined the Sigma Psi sorority. When elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1922, she became the first woman to sit on a state supreme court. Roosevelt appointed Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1934, she became the first woman to serve on an Article III federal court. Finally, in 1959, Allen became the first woman to be chief judge of a United States Court of Appeals.