Grace Raymond Hebard

Grace Raymond Hebard (July 2, 1861 – October 1936) gained prominence as a Wyoming historian, suffragist, pioneering scholar, prolific writer, political economist and noted University of Wyoming educator. Hebard's standing as a historian in part rose from her years trekking Wyoming's high plains and mountains seeking first-hand accounts of Wyoming's early pioneers. Today her books on Wyoming history are sometimes challenged due to Hebard's tendency to romanticize the Old West, spurring questions regarding accuracy of her research findings. In particular, her conclusion after decades of field research that Sacajawea (participant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition) was buried in Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reservation is called into question.

Yet Hebard didn't let critics limit her. She served as the first female on the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees, where she exercised authority over the university finances, its president, and faculty. Her University of Wyoming role extended to establishing the university's first library. Moreover, Hebard served as a professor for 28 years. Hebard also broke new ground when she became the first woman admitted to the Wyoming State Bar Association (1898); admitted to practice before the Wyoming Supreme Court (1914); and appointed by her peers as vice president of the National Society of Women Lawyers.

Whether it be as a legal professional, educator, or feminist, the Iowa native spearheaded her own one-woman progressive movement. The range rider seemed to be constantly on the stump in Wyoming giving speeches, organizing historical associations, conducting citizenship classes for immigrants, participating in the local and national suffragist movement, lobbying for child-welfare laws, serving as a Red Cross volunteer, and traveling the state selling war bonds during World War I.

Grace Hebard was born in the Mississippi river town of Clinton, Iowa, on July 2, 1861 to Rev. George Diah Alonzo Hebard (1831–1870) and Margaret E. Dominick Hebard (Marven). Her family soon moved to Iowa City where her father, a missionary and a later territorial legislator, built a new Presbyterian church. Hebard took her B.S. in what is now civil engineering at the University of Iowa in 1882. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi Women's Fraternity. Hebard became the first woman to "be graduated from the Civil Engineering Dep(artment) of the University," according to documents at the University of Iowa Library. In later years, Hebard reflected in a 1928 letter to a colleague on her singular experience as a female engineering student:

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