Her story had been lost amid dusty records that were long ago stashed in deep storage and forgotten. Forgotten until a retired federal agent, researching the history of Chicago law enforcement, stumbled upon a mention of her name and a reference to the fact that, in the 1890s, she had become a police officer in Chicago. The date caught his attention. A female police officer in the 1890s? Now, after three years and hundreds of hours of research, Rick Barrett, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and amateur historian, says he has found definitive evidence that a woman named Marie Owens was not only the first policewoman in Chicago but also the first known female officer in the United States.

If true, Barrett's discovery would be "huge," said Dave MacFarlan, a police historian and member of the Chicago Police History Committee, who noted that the Police Department previously believed the first female officers joined the force in 1913. Debate has long swirled around the identity of the nation's first female cop. Los Angeles claimed the distinction of hiring the first, saying a woman joined their department in 1910. Yet Portland, Ore., points to its own female officer, hired in 1908. Barrett's claim would trump them both, and already the discovery has created a ripple of excitement among local historians. "It's a big deal, and it's great for Chicago," said Russell Lewis, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum. For Barrett, a square-jawed, hard-charging former investigator, uncovering Owens' story has become nothing short of a quest. He crisscrossed the city, befriending archivists and pulling strings to access pension records, civil service documents and cemetery plot listings. Getting Owens the credit she deserves is, in his view, an issue of justice. …More