Judge, lawyer, and suffragist, Jennie Loitman Barron, was born on October 13, 1891 in Boston’s West End. Barron attended Boston University where she earned her BA, LL.B, and LL.M. degrees and was active in Boston University’s League for Equal Suffrage. Barron started her own law firm after graduation and created a new firm with her husband Samuel Barron, Jr. when they married four years later.

Barron was elected president of the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers and campaigned for uniform marriage and divorce laws, as well as for women’s right to serve on juries. She also worked to mobilize women to exercise their newly established right to vote.

Barron began her thirty-five year career as a judge in 1934 when she was appointed by the governor as a special justice of the Western Norfolk District Court. In 1937, she was named to be an associate justice of the Boston Municipal Court. She left this position when she became an associate justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court in 1957—the first woman to hold this position.

Throughout her career, Barron remained active in the Jewish community serving as the first president of the Women’s Auxiliary of Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, on the first board of Brandeis University National Women’s Committee, and as the first president of the New England Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress. Barron died in March 1969, one year after her husband’s death.

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 122-123.