Hortense Sparks Malsch Ward

Ward's 1925 seat on the special court came only after a long search. All three elected justices belonged to the Woodmen of the World, and Governor Pat Neff found that every prominent male lawyer he approached did too. His first all-woman bench, named January 1, 1925, ran into the constitution's seven-year experience rule; after resignations it was Ward as chief justice with Ruth Brazzil of Galveston and Hattie Henenberg of Dallas. They met in the Capitol on January 8, and on May 23 Ward's majority opinion gave the Woodmen both El Paso tracts.

What the plaque says

Hortense Sparks Malsch Ward Hortense Ward was born in 1872 in Matagorda County and was the eldest child of Frederick and M. Louise (Labauve) Sparks. As a child, Hortense attended the Catholic Academy of Nazareth in Victoria and later taught school for a time in Edna. While in Edna she married Albert Malsch; the couple had three daughters, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1906. In 1909, Hortense married William Henry Ward in Houston. in 1910, Hortense Ward passed the Texas State Bar Examination and became one of the first female attorneys in Texas. She joined with her husband to form the law firm of Ward & Ward, becoming the first female attorney to practice in Houston. Hortense led the campaign for passage of the 1913 "Married Woman's Property Law" in the Texas Legislature. The law defined separate and community properties of a husband and wife and removed disabilities of a married woman to control her separate property. Ward achieved many firsts during her career, including being the first Texas female attorney admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915 and the first woman to register to vote in Harris County in 1918. In 1925, Gov. Pat Neff appointed Ward as Special Chief Justice of a special all-woman Texas Supreme Court to hear a case involving the Woodmen of the World, because qualified male attorneys without ties to the organization could not be found. It would be 57 years before another female served on the court. Ward retired from practicing law upon the 1939 death of her husband. She remained active in various ladies clubs and community organizations until her death in 1944. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 2.1 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 3.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 3.8 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 4.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Mollie Bailey — steps away
• Zion Lutheran Church — 0.3 mi
• Woodland Heights Community — 0.4 mi
• Huelga Schools — 0.8 mi