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A formidable legal mind and leader, Anna Sandbo is believed to be the first woman to practice law in Austin, Texas.1 Born on Jan. 1, 1875,2 Anna Irene Sandbo earned a B.A. (1908) and M.A. (1913) from the University of Texas at Austin and became the first woman to earn an L.L.M. (1916) from Texas Law.3 While at Texas Law, Sandbo joined eight other women law students in organizing and founding the Texas Women’s Law Association, and she served as its first president (1916). Profoundly, the preamble to that boldly progressive organization’s constitution rings out the following resolution:
“Believing that the widening interests of women in all the practical affairs of life will also manifest itself in an increasing interest on their part in the enactment and interpretation of our laws, and that the time will soon come when woman’s influence will assert itself more directly and effectively than has heretofore been done upon the spirit and form of our laws, and upon the problems connected with the enforcement of such laws; and believing that such movement will result in a steadily increasing number of women students in the law schools of this country generally and not least in the department of law in the University of Texas, and believing that the few women students now enrolled in said department, the forerunners of many to follow, may possibly be of some little service in that particular department of our university by organizing an association through which woman’s viewpoint and judgment may in the years to come find expression with reference in that department, and their work in the same, do hereby organize the Texas Woman’s Law Association, and adopt the following constitution and by-laws.”4
Her well-recognized leadership at the law school was reflected in the school’s 1916 yearbook entry:
“Mrs. Sandbo–The most popular co-ed in the Senior Law class. She already has more degrees than are good for one ordinary person – but she’s no ordinary person. She helped to blaze the trail for women in the department, and made a bit of history when she was elected first president of the Texas Woman’s Law Association.”5
Anna’s husband, Anders Sandbo, was a practicing attorney in Austin, and she joined his practice after graduation, ultimately taking it over after his death in 1925.6 When asked by a journalist how and why she began to practice law, she related the following:
“Well…I didn’t meet the opposition which most women have to face when entering an active professional life, because I sort of slipped upon it as it were, and was practicing long before anyone knew anything about it. My husband was a lawyer and was ill for a number of years, so that I practically took over his work several years before his death. There was much more prejudice against women in professional life than there is now, and no doubt if his clients had known that the opinions which he gave them were my opinions, there would have been objections, but it was all good training for me against the time when I was to take over the practice in my own name.”
When, in the same interview, she was asked “What is the attitude of Austin lawyers to their only woman opponent?” Anna Sandbo replied: “I have had every encouragement and courtesy from them…The members of the Austin Bar are, without exception, my very good friends.”7 She indicated that she had more challenges with acceptance by other women. “Women have more faith in a man lawyer. They often call me up for free advice, then employ a man lawyer to carry out my instructions.”8
Anna and her husband lived in a house at 200 E. 30th Street in Austin–a home which is now historically designated and known as the Brueggemann-Sandbo House.9 She was a well-respected practicing attorney, was prominent in Austin civic affairs, and was one of the first members of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, which publicly honored her in 1959. She was a member of the Gethsemane Lutheran Church, the Chamber of Commerce, the Travis County Bar Association, and the State Bar of Texas.10 For many years, she was president of the Skandia Mutual Life Insurance Company.11
She was known for many accomplishments and contributions to the Austin community, which were chronicled in Austin newspapers over the years. Notably, in 1954, she was named “Austin Woman of the Year” by the Austin Soroptimist Club, and was also honored by the Altrusa Club in 1962 at an event at the Driskill Hotel where Judge Clyde Smith paid tribute to her many years of legal service to the Austin community.12 She had helped to establish the Altrusa Club in 1923.13
Anna Sandbo’s academic interests and abilities were apparent early. She served as a governess and tutor for the children of the prominent Bremond family14 and was a teacher at Trinity College in Round Rock.15 She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas while she was teaching at the Colorado School (Bergstrom) and at Tyler College.16 Her scholarly pursuits included a paper, “Beginnings of the Secession Movement in Texas,” which was published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in July 1914 and was used as required reading for many years by L. T. Ellis in his Texas History course at the University of Texas at Austin.17
She is also known to have tutored numerous law students who were preparing to take the bar exam, offering preparatory classes three times a year before bar exams and authoring a manual, which was used by almost all in their preparation for examination.18 One of her students, Thomas C. Clark, went on to become a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Concerning the style and depth of her tutoring, Judge Sam Houston Clinton is to have remarked that she did more than tutor, “She drilled the information into us.”19
A well-regarded Austinite, dedicated lawyer, proponent of excellence in practice, feminist, and member of the Austin Equal Suffrage Association,20 the remarkable Anna Sandbo died on Oct. 25,1964.21 Her obituary in the Statesman opened with the following: “Death claimed one of Austin’s best known pioneer residents, Mrs. Anna I. Sandbo, 90 year-old attorney who became Austin’s first woman lawyer nearly 50 years ago…”22
Endnotes
1 https://law.utexas.edu/news/2021/03/08/history-makers-the-first-women-at-texas-law/
2 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo
3 https://law.utexas.edu/news/2021/03/08/history-makers-the-first-women-at-texas-law/
4 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo#view-photo=215501381 (newspaper article (publication/date unknown) “Women Law students Organize Association”)
5 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo#view-photo=215500566 (reproduced entry on Mrs. Anna Irene Sandbo (1916) from “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012”)
6 https://law.utexas.edu/news/2021/03/08/history-makers-the-first-women-at-texas-law/
7 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo#view-photo=215617210 (newspaper article (publication/date unknown) “Success in Law is No Respecter of Sex”)
8 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo#view-photo=215617210 (newspaper article (publication/date unknown) “Success in Law is No Respecter of Sex”)
9 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/11/ (citing Austin City Directory, 1914, pp. 172, 695 through all intervening years to Austin City Directory, 1930-1031, p. 458)
10 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/11/ (citing articles in the Austin American and Austin Statesman, February 22, 1962)
11 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing articles in the Austin American and Austin Statesman, February 22, 1962)
12 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing articles in the Austin American and Austin Statesman, February 22, 1962).
13 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing articles in the Austin American and Austin Statesman, February 22, 1962).
14 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing interview with Mrs. Dorothy Owens).
15 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing interview with Mrs. Emil Lundstedt).
16 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/11/ (citing articles in the Austin American and Austin Statesman, February 22, 1962)
17 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing articles in the Austin American and Austin Statesman, February 22, 1962).
18 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo#view-photo=215617210 (newspaper article (publication/date unknown) “Success in Law is No Respecter of Sex”)
19 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing Remark by Judge Clinton at the April 21, 1980 meeting of the Austin Historic Landmark Commission).
20 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo#view-photo=215500550 (newspaper article publication/date unknown “Austin Equal Suffrage Association Shows Wonderful Growth”)
21 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26218121/anna-irene-sandbo
22 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491715/m1/13/ (citing Austin Statesman, October 26, 1964, and October 27, 1964).
