Background
Margaret Center Klingelsmith was born on November 27, 1859 in Portland, Maine, United States. Her parents, Isaac Henry and Caroline How (Evans) Center, both belonged to old and prominent New England families.
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Margaret Center Klingelsmith was born on November 27, 1859 in Portland, Maine, United States. Her parents, Isaac Henry and Caroline How (Evans) Center, both belonged to old and prominent New England families.
Margaret attended private schools at Newton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine. She entered the law school of the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 and soon made a record for herself as a student. Her essay on "The Tendency of Common Law in Crimes and Torts" won an honorable mention for the Meredith Prize. She graduated in 1898, receiving the degree of bachelor of laws. In 1916 she received the honorary degree of master of laws from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1899 Klingelsmith was appointed librarian of the Biddle Law Library of the University of Pennsylvania law school, a position which she held until her last illness, serving for nearly thirty-two years. When she undertook this work the library contained only seven or eight thousand volumes. With the assistance and support of the faculty, especially former Dean William Draper Lewis, she was able to develop it until it numbered nearly 80, 000 volumes and was one of the leading law libraries in the country. Her unusual talent as well as knowledge in her line of work was often shown during her frequent trips abroad in the interest of the library, when she purchased many rare and valuable books.
When the law school was moved from its temporary quarters in old Congress Hall, at Sixth and Chestnut Streets, to its new building at Thirty-Fourth and Chestnut Streets, Mrs. Klingelsmith wrote a history of the school which was published in the University of Pennsylvania: The Proceedings at the Dedication of the New Building of the Department of Law (1900). Meanwhile paleography was attracting her, and she became widely known as an authority in that field. She was also recognized as being unusually well informed on the subject of early English year books. In 1915 she published under the title Statham's Abridgment of the Law (2 vols. ), a translation of a fifteenth-century work in Norman French.
She was also the author of a number of essays and biographies, including lives of James Wilson and Jeremiah Sullivan Black in volumes I and VI (1907, 1909) of William Draper Lewis' Great American Lawyers. Her writings reflected much of the charm and originality of her character.
She contributed frequently to legal magazines and did much work on William Draper Lewis' and George Wharton Pepper's Digest of Decisions and Encyclopaedia of Pennsylvania Law 1754-1898 (23 vols. , 1898 - 1906) and on the second edition of Pepper and Lewis's Digest of Laws (1910).
No other woman was so well known to the Philadelphia bar and her kindly, helpful spirit endeared her to several generations of law students. She was one of the first women admitted to the law school and was also one of the first admitted to the Philadelphia bar. One of her best work was Statham's Abridgment of the Law (1915). The University of Pennsylvania recognized this scholarly achievement in 1916 by conferring upon her the honorary degree of master of laws, the first time that the institution had conferred this distinction upon a woman. After her death, the faculty of the law school and other friends erected a tablet to her memory in the Biddle Law Library.
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Margaret was one of the leading members of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.
Klingelsmith took an active interest in politics. At one time she received the support of the Democratic state organization as a candidate for justice of the superior court of Pennsylvania.
During 1912 and 1913 Klingelsmith was vice-president of the American Association of Law Libraries. She was also a member of the Woman's Suffrage Association.
In 1884 Klingelsmith was married to Joseph M. Klingelsmith at Atlanta, Georgia.
