Annette Abbott Adams

Annette Abbott Adams (12 March 1877 – 26 October 1956) was an American lawyer and judge. She was born at Prattville, Cal. and educated at the Chico State Normal School and the University of California.

In 1912, she was admitted to the California bar. She campaigned for Woodrow Wilson in California, and was rewarded after his election with an appointment as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of California, 191419. In 191820 she was attorney in the same district. In 1920 she was appointed as the first female Assistant Attorney General of the United States, an office which she resigned in 1921.

Adams ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1923. She had a successful private law practice until 1942, when Governor Culbert Olson appointed her as presiding judge of the California Court of Appeal for the Third District in Sacramento. She won election to a twelve-year term on the court later that year, but retired in 1952 for health reasons. In 1950, she served by special assignment on one case in the California Supreme Court, becoming the first woman to sit on that court.

Adams died in Sacramento in 1956.

References

*American National Biography, vol. I, pp. 66-67.

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