ÙPARAÑPAR@`ÿÿÿÿÿÿ¡TEXT`“Morris, Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack 1814Ð1902 suffragist and public official Born near Spencer, New York, on August 8, 1814, Esther McQuigg was apprenticed to a seamstress after being orphaned when she was eleven. In August 1841 she married Artemus Slack, and after his death three years later she moved with her young son to Peru, Illinois, where Slack had left her property. A short time later she married John Morris, a local merchant. Early in 1869 they moved to Wyoming Territory and settled in South Pass City. There she apparently exerted her considerable personality on behalf of the notion of woman suffrage. It may well have been largely owing to her that the legislator elected from her district in the first territorial election in 1869, William H. Bright, promptly introduced a bill providing for woman suffrage that was passed in December of that year. In February 1870 Morris was appointed justice of the peace for South Pass City, a job for which, despite the rough character of the gold-mining town of saloons and fewer than 500 people, her robust frame and blunt fearlessness well suited her. In her 8Ä months in the post she tried over 70 cases expeditiously and without reversal. She was the first woman ever to hold such a position. She contributed occasionally to Susan B. AnthonyÕs Revolution. In 1871 she left her husband and moved to Laramie, where in 1873 she was briefly on the ballot for state representative. She later left Wyoming for New York, but she returned by 1890 and settled in Cheyenne. In her later years Morris was increasingly honored for her role in the attainment of suffrage in Wyoming, the first success of the movement for national woman suffrage. She died in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 2, 1902. Her reputation continued to grow in succeeding years, and in 1960 statues of her were placed in Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol and before the Wyoming state house in Cheyenne. þstyl`!5ª$5ª.5ªN!Ik 5ªl!I!IÞ"!I%!I/!I 5ª!Ilink`HYPR"