From collection Candidates
Ada Miser Kepley ran for Illinois state attorney general in 188l. Kepley wrote: "I have been a candidate for state's attorney on a County Prohibition ticket, and received more votes than any other candidate thereon. Had I been elected I proposed to test the question whether or not a woman could act as states attorney, as the right was disputed." She was twice elected to serve on the local school board and was the first woman School Director in Effingham County, Illinois. In her 1886 race for school board she ran against her own husband and defeated him, receiving a majority of twelve votes. Kepley was the first woman to graduate from a U.S. law school-the Union Law College, Chicago (now known as Northwestern University), in 1870. She was an avid temperance worker with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, on the national and Illinois state levels. Kepley also worked for woman suffrage beginning in the 1880s. She became an ordained Unitarian minister in 1892.
