Nellie Gray Robertson
Granbury, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in 1894 as the sixth and only daughter of William Jarrett Robertson and Arminda Barton Robertson, Nellie Gray Robertson grew up amid financial hardships in Hood County. She entered the University of Texas in the fall of 1912 and attended for six years. Nellie passed the Texas Bar in 1918 to join the male-dominated profession of law. Nellie returned to Hood County to run in the Democratic Party primary for county attorney. She became the first female county attorney in the State of Texas. Between 1918 and 1926, Nellie was elected county attorney for three terms. In 1922, she ran for county judge of Hood County against four men and lost. However, in May of the next year, Nellie returned to the county attorney's seat. She was named to sit as chief justice on the first all-woman Texas Supreme Court in 1925 but she could not serve because of the rule that any justice had to have practiced law for at least seven years. She was a couple of months shy of this requirement. Nellie lived at home with her mother on Travis Street in Granbury and never married. After Nellie left elected office in 1926, she moved to New York City to write law books for Doubleday Publishing. Nellie returned to Texas to work for the Stewart Abstract and Title Guarantee Company in Houston in 1927. She was promoted to manage the Stewart Title Company in Beaumont where she worked for 20 years. Nellie was also a partner in the Beaumont law firm Stewart, Burgess, Morris, and Robertson. Nellie was very active in the community, serving as grand matron of the Granbury chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nellie Robertson helped open the doors for women to become involved in politics and positions of power in Texas. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in 1894 into a struggling Hood County family, Nellie Gray Robertson entered the University of Texas in 1912 and passed the state bar in 1918, breaking into a profession then closed to women. She returned home to win election as Hood County attorney—the first woman to hold that office in Texas—and served multiple terms, and in 1925 was named to sit on an all-woman Texas Supreme Court, though she narrowly lacked the required years of practice to serve. She later wrote law books in New York and led title companies in Houston and Beaumont.
Why it matters
Robertson helped pry open the doors of Texas law and politics to women in the years just after they won the vote, setting precedents others would follow.
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Themes & tags
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