mountain community where she lived. The challenges in the court dealing with a rough constituency were compounded by her husband, John, who had a reputation as "a brawler, an idler, and a drunk." Morris had him arrested, after her term in office was over, for assault and battery, according to the American Heritage magazine. Troubles continued to mount for the family. An 1871 fire struck the South Pass City newspaper office owned and operated by Esther Morris's son, Archibald Slack, forcing him and his wife Sarah to move to Laramie in Albany County. Shortly after her son's departure and a particularly bad winter in 1871–72, Morris left her husband and the camp. Morris traveled to Laramie, where she briefly lived with her son Archy; however, the former judge remained unsettled. She moved to Albany, New York, then to Springfield, Illinois, where she spent her winters, according to Massie. Summers saw her returning to Wyoming, where she spent time with her sons. Morris's wandering ended in the 1880s when she returned to Cheyenne to live with her son Robert. Morris had been but one of many in a long history of residents who saddled up and called it quits in South Pass City. Short-lived gold strikes in the 1880s, 1890s, and 1930s once again lured miners back to the mountains seeking their fortunes. Life after the mines After Wyoming's enactment of women's suffrage in 1869, the territory's appointment of Morris as the first woman justice of the peace in the United States in 1870, and the first woman to hold judicial office in the modern world, drew widespread national attention. Morris's involvement in women's causes also continued after she left the gold mines and South Pass City: February 1872: She participated in the American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in San Francisco. August 1873: Nominated by the Woman's Party of Wyoming as a candidate to the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, a nomination that Morris declined. 1876: Served as vice president, National American Woman Suffrage Association. July 1876: Addressed the National Suffrage Convention in Philadelphia. July 1890: Presented the new Wyoming state flag to Governor Warren during the Wyoming statehood celebration. 1896: Attended as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, which nominated the William McKinley-Garret A. Hobart ticket. (She was not related to Vice President Hobart, who died in office in 1899.) Death and legacy Esther Hobart Morris died