Digital Bob Archive

The first woman lawyer in this part of Alaska was Isabel Ambler Gilman who was admitted to the bar in Juneau by Judge Thomas A. Lyons on December 6, 1910. She was not, however, Alaska's first woman lawyer. That honor belongs to Josephine Todman who was admitted to the bar at Nome on November 1, 1902.

Isabel Ambler was born in Yorkshire, England, about 1864, was educated there and taught school in England and Wales before she came to the United States in 1888. She spent a year with relatives in Zanesville, Ohio, then taught school at Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which had just become a state.
Deadwood was the home of \"Calamity Jane\" Burke and was not considered a tame town. From there Miss Ambler went to another teaching job in staid Meredith, New Hampshire. She also served as clerk of the school board and a lecturer at the local grange. While there she published a volume of poetry, \"Echoes from the Grange.\"

Miss Ambler married Captain George E. Gilman, a Civil War veteran who had become a railroad passenger agent in Ohio. While they lived there, Mrs. Gilman studied law and was graduated from the Lincoln-Jefferson University, a school that was later absorbed by Northwestern University. She was admitted to practice in Washington State in 1909 and for a time had a law office in Seattle.

In 1910 the Gilmans moved to Petersburg, Alaska, where she was principal of the school for two years. Many Southeast Alaska fishermen seined Dolly Vardens in March and April each year, shipping their catches to restaurants in the Seattle area. Then the Washington legislature enacted a law prohibiting the sale of trout in the state, and that source of income seemed lost.

Mrs. Gilman took up the cause of the Alaska fishermen, hurried to Olympia and convinced the Washington State Commissioner of Fisheries that the Dolly Varden is a char, not a trout, and hence could legally be marketed in Washington.

After leaving Petersburg, Mrs. Gilman taught at Kanakanak near Dillingham, at Seldovia, and finally at Rampart on the Yukon River. During that time she wrote articles for The Alaska-Yukon Magazine, the most important Alaska magazine of its day, and for magazines in various parts of the States. In 1914 her small book, \"Alaska land: A Curious Contradiction,\" was published in New York. She also wrote articles for Alaska newspapers on the Native people and life in Native villages.

Mr. Gilman died in 1913 and in 1916 Mrs. Gilman went to Washington state where she taught school until 1920. She then moved to New York City to write another book, \"Alaska, the American Northland,\" which gained nationwide attention when it was published in 1923. She then returned to make her home in Seattle until her death on June 16, 1949.