First in her class First in her class First in her class

A sign that welcomes visitors to Steilacoom, a small town southwest of Tacoma, announces that “Steilacoom was first.” It was the first incorporated town in what’s now the state of Washington and was home to the state’s first sawmill, first jail, first school district and first public library.

It’s only fitting that Steilacoom was the birthplace of the first woman—first person, in fact—to graduate from the Territorial University of Washington. Clara McCarty was only 18 years old when she earned a Bachelor of Science in June 1876.

That diploma came 15 years after the University first opened at its original site on the outskirts of downtown Seattle in 1861. During its turbulent early years, it closed in 1863, from 1867 to 1869, and again in 1874. The University would close one more time “on account of poverty” the year McCarty graduated, but it then managed to keep the doors open for another 148 years and counting.

The University’s first graduate, Clara McCarty, earned her degree in an era when campus included schoolchildren, college-level students and faculty, pictured above in 1883.

When McCarty attended the young University, Seattle was a hardscrabble town with a reputation for lawlessness and a population of a few thousand, mostly loggers and sailors. The University mainly served the city’s schoolchildren, with only a few students taking collegiate courses. There were only eight faculty members, and tuition was $30 a year.

“Typewriters and fountain pens were unknown, and even notebooks and pen and ink were scarce,” she later recalled. “Nearly all writing was done with pencil on foolscap paper.”

According to the Seattle Daily Times, McCarty, a woman of many firsts, was the first woman to earn a bachelor’s degree on the West Coast. Years later, she told the newspaper that as the only graduate of 1876, she had “shared honors as class president and valedictorian.”

After teaching and earning a master’s degree at the University of California, she returned to Pierce County, and in 1880, at 22 years old, successfully ran for election as its first superintendent of public schools. It was three years before women in the territory won the right to vote and 40 years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The first woman elected to public office in the territory, she stayed on the job for two years before marrying and retiring from office. Her husband, John Henry Wilt, was a fellow teacher who became deputy district court clerk and county sheriff.

In 1883, according to biographer Deb Freedman, McCarty became better known in Pierce County for another first: She owned the county’s first typewriter. She made about $10 a day—more than $300 in today’s dollars—typing briefs for a law firm. She also entertained scores of visitors who knocked on her door to behold the new technology.

McCarty stayed active in Tacoma civic organizations and returned to work after her husband’s death in 1909. Ever the go-getter, she took on jobs as a secretary at the YWCA, as an assistant at the Washington State Historical Society and as a librarian. She died in 1929 at age 71.

Most of today’s students might not know who McCarty was, but her name should ring a bell. McCarty Hall, one of the student residences on campus, was named for her in 1962.

Lead photo: The UW mainly served the city's schoolchildren in the late 1800s, when the population of Seattle was smaller than that of current-day Steilacoom, McCarty's hometown.