Marilla M. Ricker was born in New Durham, NH on March 18, 1840 the daughter of Jonathan B. and Hannah D. (Stevens) Young. Her father was a farmer and a cousin of Brigham Young. She had one brother, Joseph D. Young, who was killed in the Civil War, and two sisters, Helen Frances, who married Samuel G. Jones of New Durham and Adelaide, a nurse. She took courses at Colby Academy in New London, NH and taught school until 1863 when she married John Ricker of Dover.
After the death of her husband in 1868, she went to Washington, D.C. and studied law. She was admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia in 1882. After several years of successful practice in Washington, she returned to New Hampshire where she was admitted to the bar in July 1890 being the first woman to accomplish this. In 1891 she was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court.
In 1910 Mrs. Ricker ran for governor of New Hampshire even though she was not allowed to vote. She served as vice-president at large of the National Legislative League and as president of the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association.
Mrs. Ricker died Nov. 12, 1920 at 7 Ham Street in Dover, the home of John W. Hogan the publisher of the Dover Tribune, where she had lived for approximately two years. She was a very vocal atheist and her will contained these instructions “there shall be no religious sermon preached at my funeral – only remarks as my personal friends, knowing my wishes and beliefs, choose to make.” She also specified that her body was to be cremated and the ashes put around an apple tree at the farm where she was born in New Durham.
Photograph from Dover Public Library archives, text from Marston, Robert, Dover, NH: People, Businesses and Organizations: 1850 to 1950. Dover, NH, 2004.