This biographical and historical sketch is from the Dictionary of Missouri Biography published 1999 by The Curators of the University of Missouri. Links are to related primary sources at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection on the four campuses of the University of Missouri system.
Previous sketches are also available.
She graduated from the St. Louis public high school at fifteen and taught Sunday school at the Second Baptist Church. Her father was chief of police in the city during the Civil War, and her mother served as a nursing volunteer for the Ladies' Union Aid Society, escorting wounded soldiers back to St. Louis after battles in the western department. An ardent Union supporter and always notably striking woman, Couzins served as the queen of flowers at a fund-raiser given to aid the Western Sanitary Commission in June 1863. In 1869 Washington Law School admitted Couzins, becoming one of the first schools in the country to offer a woman an education in jurisprudence. She graduated in 1871 and, in the course of her life, was admitted to the bar associations of Missouri, Arkansas, Utah, and Kansas, and the Dakota Territory federal courts.