Harriett Daggett

Harriett Spiller Daggett (August 5, 1891 – July 22, 1966) was an attorney from Baton Rouge, Louisiana,  who was a pioneer for women in the area of legal education and research.

A native of Springfield in Livingston Parish, east of Baton Rouge, Daggett was the daughter of Blasingaim Spiller and the former Maria Louise Dolan. In 1909, she graduated from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, with credentials in professional education at the time NSU was known as Louisiana Normal Institute for teacher training. She taught school for a number of years in Jennings in Jefferson Davis Parish in southwestern Louisiana. She left teaching to enroll in Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1923 and a Master of Arts in 1928.^[1] Her superior record as a law student prompted Dean Robert Lee Tullis (1864-1955), a native of Tensas Parish, Louisiana,^[2] to recommend her appointment as a law instructor after her admission to the bar in 1926.^[3] In 1929, she received her law degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Daggett soon became a full professor at LSU Law School, the first woman to achieve this distinction in an American law school. She remained on the teaching faculty until her retirement as professor-emeritus in 1961.^[1] Thereafter, she was continually in demand as a lecturer.^[3]

Daggett's research interest was on matters of community property, family relations, and mineral rights. In 1931, she wrote The Community Property System of Louisiana; in 1939, Mineral Rights in Louisiana, both pioneering works. She introduced a course at LSU Law in mineral rights and founded the LSU Mineral Law Institute. She contributed to the Oil and Gas Reporter of the Southwest Legal Foundation. She was a chairman of the Louisiana Library Commission and established Family Court in East Baton Rouge Parish.^[1] 

In 1911, Harriet Spiller married DeVan Damon Daggett, Sr., of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans. Both of the couple's sons became lawyers, DeVan, Jr., and John D. Daggett (1920-1982), interred at Greenoaks Memorial Park in Baton Rouge,^[4] Harriett Daggett died of a lengthy illness in Baton Rouge at the age of seventy-four.^[3][5]

References[edit]