Ida Viola Wells (February 12, 1878 – June 14, 1950) was an American lawyer.[1]
Early life
Wells was born to Harry Taylor Wells (1853–1932), a dentist, and Ella Morella Wells (née Bennett; 1856–1939).[2]
Career
Wells, in 1916, earned a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Southern California.[3] She was an associate with Arthur Wilson Eckman (1885–1974) in the Walter P. Story Building in the Broadway Theater and Commercial Districts of Los Angeles. For a little over two years, beginning December 18, 1921, Wells was Assistant State Inheritance Tax Attorney for California.[4][2] She resigned January 31, 1924, to take charge of the Women's Bureau of the Johnson-for-President Club of Southern California. She then went on to serve as Deputy City Prosecutor for Los Angeles from about 1927 to about 1939.[5]
Wells moved to California in 1908 and lived at 1744 West 24th St., Los Angeles, California.[2] Wells, in 1943 in Berkeley, California, married Lloyd Stowell Shapley (1875–1959) (his second of three marriages; her first), a naval captain who, among other things, served as the 23rd Naval Governor of Guam, from April 7, 1926, to June 11, 1929.[7]
Binheim, Max; Elvin, Charles Arthur, eds. (1928). "California: Wells, Ida V.". Women of the West– a series of biographical sketches of living eminent women in the eleven Western States of the United States of America (1928 ed.). Los Angeles: Publishers Press. p. 93 . OCLC866260441( This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
