Born in 1874, Jessie LaFountain attended Burlington Business College and worked as a government reporter at Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester/Essex, Vermont. In 1898 she married Frederick H. Bigwood and shortly thereafter entered the office of V.A. Bullard, a Burlington attorney. In 1900 she took a special law course at Boston University and, after completing the Vermont Bar examination, was successfully admitted in October 1902. It would be 10 more years before another woman was admitted to the VT Bar and 18 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Mrs. Bigwood died in 1953.