Dora Sandoe Bachman | |
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Born | Lydora Olivia Sandoe October 8, 1869 Tiffin, Ohio |
Died | January 1, 1930 (age 60) Columbus, Ohio |
Occupation(s) | Lawyer, suffragist, school official |
Dora Sandoe Bachman (October 8, 1869 – January 1, 1930) was an American lawyer, community leader, and suffragist. She was the first woman graduate of the Ohio State University College of Law, in 1893. She was vice-president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association.
Dora Sandoe was born in Tiffin, Ohio, [1] and raised in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of Henry Harrison Sandoe and Eliza M. Barton Sandoe. Her father was a pastor in the Reformed Church. [2] She attended Pleasantville Collegiate Institute and Curry University. [3] In 1893, she became the first woman graduate of the Ohio State University College of Law, [4] [5] and the seventh woman admitted to the bar in Ohio. [6] [7]
Bachman taught school as a young woman. [2] She and her husband shared a law practice in Columbus, where she specialized in family law. [8] She was the first woman elected to the Columbus Board of Education, on which she held a seat from 1910 to 1917. [9] She served as board president in 1913, the first woman to be a school board president in an Ohio city. [2] She ran unsuccessfully for a judgeship in 1920. [10] She was attorney for the Florence Crittenden Home in Columbus. [1] She was founding vice-president of the Columbus Home and School Association. [11] She chaired the legislative committee of the Ohio branch of the National Congress of Mothers. [12]
Bachman was vice-president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, [13] [14] during the presidency of Harriet Taylor Upton. She drafted the defeated 1912 Ohio suffrage referendum, and a field worker on the campaign for the 1914 Ohio suffrage referendum, which also failed. In 1913 she was part of the Ohio contingent marching in the large pro-suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. She served as a legal advisor to Alice Paul in the formation of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. [4] "Suffrage is but one step in the evolution of woman," she told a 1917 audience. "Economic independence is the next step." [13] She became head of the Social Hygiene Committee of the Ohio League of Women Voters in 1920.
Bachman was president of the Columbus Cremation Society, and a member of the Columbus Women's Newspaper Club. [8] She spoke at the YWCA in Akron in 1914, on "Woman as a Citizen". [15] She spoke to the Columbus chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta in 1917, on "Ohio Laws Pertaining to Women". [16] She spoke to the Columbus Woman's Homeopathic Society in 1920, on "The Causes of Delinquency" among working girls. [17]
Sandoe married fellow lawyer Jacob Leo Bachman. One of their three sons died in infancy in 1904. [4] Her husband died in 1920, [18] and she died in 1930, at the age of 60, in Columbus. [7]