Helen M. Gougar advocated for women's suffrage and prohibition as a lawyer, writer, and lecturer, and directly challenged injustices through the legal system. Born in 1843, she moved to Lafayette by 1860 and to this house in 1897. She began a newspaper column in 1878 and later owned a temperance paper. In the 1880s, she argued for women's suffrage before the Indiana General Assembly and the U.S. Senate. In 1894, she challenged suffrage laws by attempting to vote; after she was denied, she filed suit against the county election board. At a time when few women were lawyers, she gained admission to the bar and argued for "The Constitutional Rights of the Women of Indiana" before county court in 1895 and the Indiana Supreme Court in 1897. She died in 1907, and women achieved suffrage in 1920.