Arabella Mansfield (May 23, 1846 – August 1, 1911), born Belle Aurelia Babb, became the first female lawyer in the United States in 1869, admitted to the Iowa bar; she made her career as a college educator and administrator.

Shortly after her court challenge, Iowa amended its licensing statute and became the first state to accept women and minorities into its bar.

During her career, Mansfield worked primarily as an educator and activist, teaching at Iowa Wesleyan College and DePauw University.

[citation needed] As many men were leaving to fight in the American Civil War, universities were admitting more women students and hiring them as teachers.

She returned to Mount Pleasant to marry her college sweetheart, John Melvin Mansfield, a young professor at Iowa Wesleyan.

Mansfield died August 1, 1911, at the home of her brother, Washington I. Babb, in Aurora, Illinois, before getting to see the suffrage movement’s ultimate achievement: passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, effective in 1920.