Hopkinsville native Mary Bronaugh, born on Oct. 12, 1885, was admitted to the Kentucky Bar to practice law in 1915, and was among some of the first women in Kentucky to do so.
Bronaugh was the daughter of William Venable and Mary Edmunds Bronaugh. She graduated from the Chicago Law School and lived briefly in Louisville around the time she passed her test to practice law.
She lived with her mother and extended family in a Main Street residence following the death of her father, by suicide, aboard the USS Kearsarge at Brooklyn Navy Yard In New York in the fall of 1902. William Bronaugh had graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy.
Mary Bronaugh, a member of First Baptist Church, devoted much of her adult life to civic and political work. A suffragist, she was a founding member and the first chairwoman of the Kentucky League of Women Voters.
Bronaugh helped organize the Hopkinsville Woman’s Club in 1920, and likely had a role in a statewide meeting in Hopkinsville for the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1922, which lasted three days.
Although she became known in Hopkinsville as reclusive and eccentric later in life, Bronaugh is mentioned in numerous newspaper articles across the state during the first half of the 20th century for her efforts to give women the right to vote and for other civic work.
She was a neighbor of Hopkinsville Mayor Charles Meacham, whose newspaper, the Hopkinsville Kentuckian, carried a feature story on March 2, 1909, about a letter to the mayor from France. Meacham called on Bronaugh to read and translate the letter for him and to write a response. The story described Bronaugh as an accomplished French scholar.
A story published by The Courier-Journal on March 20, 1920, headlined “Women Caution All Candidates,” listed Bronaugh and 21 other members of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association who warned that male political leaders would be “out of luck” if they opposed granting suffrage to women. (The 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified on Aug. 18 of that year.)
Bronaugh died in a Pembroke nursing home on April 15, 1973. She is buried at Riverside Cemetery.
(Correction: An earlier version of this article noted that family history indicated Bronaugh was the first woman in Kentucky to pass the bar to practice law. The story should have stated she was among the first women in the state to pass the bar.)
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
