Bachman taught school as a young woman. She was the first woman elected to the
Columbus Board of Education, on which she held a seat from 1910 to 1917. She served as board president in 1913, the first woman to be a school board president in an Ohio city. She was attorney for the Florence Crittenden Home in Columbus. She chaired the legislative committee of the Ohio branch of the
National Congress of Mothers. Bachman was vice-president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, during the presidency of
Harriet Taylor Upton. She drafted the defeated 1912 Ohio suffrage referendum, and a field worker on the campaign for the 1914 Ohio suffrage referendum, which also failed. In 1913 she was part of the Ohio contingent marching in the
large pro-suffrage parade in
Washington, D.C. She served as a legal advisor to
Alice Paul in the formation of the
Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. She spoke to the Columbus chapter of
Kappa Alpha Theta in 1917, on "Ohio Laws Pertaining to Women". She spoke to the Columbus Woman's Homeopathic Society in 1920, on "The Causes of Delinquency" among working girls. ==Personal life==