Notes |
- South Dakota History, Volume 42, No. 3
Page 212
Fellow Sioux Falls resident Alice E. Bassett gained admissions to the bar six months after Rochford. Born in April of 1867 near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Bassett was the youngest child of Ira Norton Bassett, a Civil War veteran who died when Alice was young, and Betsey Babcock Bassett. In her early twenties, after graduation from Jennings Seminary in Aurora, Illinois, Bassett came to Sioux Falls, first working as a teacher then as a stenographer in the law office of Charles P. Bates, where she pursued her legal studies. On 5 April 1898, she successfully passed the examination before the South Dakota Supreme Court and was admitted to practice. As a licensed lawyer, the Sioux Falls newspapers reported, Bassett tried cases and gave legal advice to a number of clients. She preferred teaching and stenographic work, however, and began a business school, giving private evening instruction before establishing her school of stenography and typewriting in the Minnehaha building in Sioux Falls. On 2 January 1900, she married lawyer Henry August Muller.
?A lawyer has an opportunity almost equal with that of the clergy along the line of helpful and upbuilding influence upon mankind?, Alice Bassett Muller declared. She named as necessary qualifications fo the job the ability to think quickly and clearly on one?s feet, good health, and kindness and sympathy. Childless herself, she identified the conflict between career and family as the primary limitation for a woman lawyer. ?To succeed,? Muller asserted, ?a woman should devote all of her time to her profession, which would bar her from rearing a family and devoting herself to her home.? She described her work in 1920 as a combination of law, stenographic reporting, and teaching, taking any kind of work that came to her and making from two to four thousand dollars a year.
As a stenographer, Muller regularly took down the proceedings at various state conventions, among them the bankers association and education association, and reported numerous political addresses, including several by William Jennings Bryan. She was the official reporter for the Department of South Dakota Grand Army of the Republic. At the time of her death on 13 April 1926, she had nearly finished compiling a history of the department, having severed as its historian for three decades. The five-hundred-page volume contained data on thousands of South Dakota?s veterans. Muller was known for her charitable work and civic involvement. She played an active role in the organization of the Sioux Falls Humane Society, for which she served as secretary, and the Business and Professional Women?s Club. She was also closely involved in church work, the YMCA, and the Prisoner?s Welfare Society.
Obituary of Alice Bassett Muller
Alice Bassett Muller died at age 59 in Sioux Falls at home, 333 W. 8th
Street. Wife of attorney Henry A. Muller. Resided in Sioux Falls since 1893.
She was born in Ohio and moved to Indiana, then to Sioux Falls. She w
"counselor at law" and operated Muller's Business School. She was prominent in
the state Business & Professional Women's Association (one time president,
another time secretary). At the time of her death she was writing "a history
of the Grand Army of the Republic". She was a court stenographer for ma
years. She belonged to the First Christian Church, the local YMCA, and
secretary of Humane Society. At one time she was a school teacher. In 1900,
she went to Lafayette, Indiana to marry Mr. Muller. The ceremony was performed
by her brother, Dr. John W. Bassett.
|