Dr. Quinn, Doc Susie, and the Reality of Colorado’s Women Doctors

Doris A. McCraw

THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES THE experiences of Colorado’s women physicians from 1870 to 1900. For clarification the following parameters are used; having graduated from a regular medical school, or after 1881, held a license issued by the state of Colorado. The idea of the lone woman doctor fighting for social and professional acceptance is both true and an exaggeration. The reality is that women physicians were accepted by society and, in some cases, the women worked together to achieve their goals. A majority lived and practiced in the larger populated areas. A few settled in smaller towns. Even before licensing began in Colorado in 1881, if women were qualified, they could establish a practice regardless of their gender.

Of course, for most people, the discussion of women doctors in Colorado usually begins with the television show, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The show aired from January 1993 to May of 1998, and two movies after the series ended. The show was developed and produced by Beth Sullivan, according to the credits.

There are many who say the show was inspired by the Virginia Cornell book about “Doc Susie,” the story of Dr. Susan Anderson and her life in Fraser, Colorado after 1907.

While Dr. Quinn was a brilliant show, the setting was Colorado Springs in 1867. In reality, Colorado Springs did not come into existence until 1871, and from the beginning, was planned as a cosmopolitan/ resort town.

While Dr. Susan Anderson had a career with many challenges in Fraser, Colorado, she did not attend medical school until the 1890s. She received her Colorado license in 1897. You can read more in “Doc Susie” by Virginia Cornell.

DR. SUSAN “DOC SUSIE” ANDERSON, A WOMAN DOCTOR WHO PRACTICED IN FRASER, COLORADO AND MAY HAVE BEEN THE INSPIRATION FOR THE POPULAR TELEVISION SHOW, DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN.

So, where did the idea of women struggling to be accepted start? A look at early medical societies and education may help.

In 1846, the American Medical Association was formed to establish a higher level of competence from doctors. Prior to the AMA’s formation, various states’ medical societies fulfilled that purpose. The Massachusetts Medical Society stated in part: “A person who is engaged in the practice of medicine or surgery in this commonwealth, not being a fellow or licensate of this society, nor a Doctor of Medicine of Harvard University, shall be deemed by the fellows of this society an irregular practitioner...” You will note there is no mention of women and in the case of Massachusetts, a requirement was to be a graduate of Medicine from Harvard. It was not that women hadn’t attempted to attend medical school, they were simply denied entrance. That started to change with the admittance of Elizabeth Blackwell to Geneva medical college and her subsequent graduation.

Dr. Blackwell, graduated in 1849 from the above mentioned college, establishing her as the first woman in the United States to get a degree from a medical college. Making her achievement even more interesting, was Dr. Blackwell had found the idea of studying medicine abhorrent when younger. In her autobiography, Blackwell tells of a dear friend, who suffered greatly during her treatments. She quotes her friend, “You are fond of study, have health and leisure; why not study medicine? If I could’ve been treated by a lady doctor, my worst sufferings would have been spared me.” At the time, Elizabeth told her it was an impossible suggestion, that she could not stand the sight of a medical book. However, the idea began to take root, and soon, Elizabeth was considering medical school. She methodically set about finding out all she needed to know to pursue that course of education. Upon finding that the cost to attend college would be around $3.000, she took a job teaching music at a school in Asheville, North Carolina. At that school, the principal, Rev. John Dickinson, was a former medical doctor. She began a trial study of medicine with Dickinson. After accumulating the $3,000, she returned to Philadelphia. which was considered the major medical learning center. Elizabeth was unable to secure admittance to any of the medical schools there, so she broadened her search. She applied to and was accepted at Geneva Medical College after a vote of the student body agreed to admit her. In her autobiography, she speaks fondly of classes, the school and the professors, but makes mention of the fact that the women of the town felt she shocked Geneva propriety. The women, as Elizabeth stated, “felt she was either a bad woman or insane.” Following graduation, she learned that her admittance may have been a lark, but she does not give much credence to it being a problem for her.

While Elizabeth Blackwell may have been the first woman to graduate from medical school, she was not the first woman doctor. There were some like Dr. Harriot Kezia Hunt, who practiced in Massachusetts in the 1830s. Dr. Hunt is noted as the first woman to apply to Harvard Medical School. To become a doctor, she studied with another doctor, as was normal at the time. She did a great deal of self-study also. Dr. Hunt began her studies after her sister Sarah became ill. It was out of desperation for Sarah’s health, Harriot turned to the English couple, Drs. Elizabeth and Richard Mott. Elizabeth Mott specialized in treating women and children. As Harriot said in her autobiography “the doubt, uncertainty, and inefficacy of medical practice had been our portion; and the best physicians had given up an only sister!” She continued studying with and working beside the Mott’s until Richard’s death when Elizabeth returned to New York. From that point on, Harriot continued to build her practice, focusing on women and children. Hunt, also, was involved in social reform, specifically abolition of slavery and women’s rights. She attended the 1850 women’s rights convention in Massachusetts. Dr. Hunt also corresponded with Dr. Blackwell on at least one occasion. Dr. Hunt states in her autobiography, “after my experiences with Harvard College, first the professors, then the students who played the same game with different men, it was truly encouraging to hear that Elizabeth Blackwell had graduated at another college, had been to Europe to perfect herself in her profession, and returned to New York to commence her practice. My soul rejoiced—I poured out my feelings in a letter and gave her the right hand of fellowship; it was acknowledged in an answer worthy of the writer.” In 1853, Hunt was awarded an honorary degree from the Female Medical College of Philadelphia.

As the stories of Elizabeth Blackwell and Kezie Hunt show, some may have questioned a woman doctor in the early 1800s. By the late 1800s, that was not the case. A look at the status and roles of female physicians in Colorado in the 1870s also questions the idea of the lone woman doctor heading out on her own.

Research suggests that female physicians in the early 1870’s tended to establish practices in urban areas. What was the reality of life for women as doctors in those early years? Colorado became a territory in 1861. Prior to that time, Colorado had been part of the Kansas territory. In 1859, there were approximately 18 doctors practicing there, all male, based on current research. By 1867, there were 14 doctors in Denver alone; although there is no record of female doctors. That all changed on January 8, 1873, when Denver’s Rocky Mountain News carried the following advertisement: “Mrs. E (Eliza). A. Gillett, (Gillette?) MD. Office and residence: Curtis Street between I and K. Special attention given to Obstetrics and diseases of women and children. References: John Major, MD., Dr. C. Wakefield, Bloomington, Illinois: R.A. Gunn MD., H.D. Garrison MD., L.S. Major MD., Prof. Bennet, Medical College, Chicago.” City directories and newspaper advertisements show Dr. Gillett was in Denver for approximately two years.

Dr. Gillett had community and professional supporters, if her advertisement is correct. But who were these professionals she cites? Dr. C. Wakefield of Bloomington, Illinois, was a patent medicine maker. The Chicago, Illinois, city directory shows Gillett as rooming at 902 W. Lake in 1867, and she is listed as a widow of G. W. Gillett. She may have been studying medicine at that time. The listing of Professor Bennet may be a verification of that fact. Additionally, L. S. Major, R. A. Gunn and H. D. Garrison were in Chicago in 1870, although Garrison is listed as a druggist in the city directory.

In 1876, when California began licensing physicians, Dr. Gillett received her license, #5, stating she received her medical degree from the Eclectic Medical College in Ohio. So, how did Dr. Gillett go from Illinois to Ohio? After the Chicago fire of 1871, other medical schools advertised in the Chicago papers that they would take medical students at no cost into their school so that they could finish their education. This may have been the case of Dr. Gillett. After leaving Denver, records show Dr. Gillett moved to New Whatcom, Washington, then to Butte, Montana.

Dr. Alida Avery arrived in Denver in 1874, with impressive credentials. She graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1862 and from the Boston University of Medicine in 1863. Prior to relocating to Colorado, Dr. Avery had been a professor at Vassar College from 1855 to 1864. In 1864, Matthew Vassar wanted all female professors at his new college, but there were not many who could qualify. He did locate two: astronomer Maria Mitchell and Dr. Alida C. Avery, physician and physiology professor. Dr. Avery, along with Miss Hannah Lyman, the school’s first principal and Dr. John H Raymond, president of the college, were called by some students ‘The Trinity’ for their power in the institution. She was also known on campus as one who zealously upheld the cause of women. Dr. Avery’s arrival in Colorado, two years prior to statehood was announced in The Rocky Mountain News in June 11, 1874:

“The well-known professor of physiology and hygiene, at Vassar College, Alida C. Avery, M. D., has arrived in Denver and taken up residence on 20th St., corner of Champa. She has been the resident physician of that institution from its opening in 1865, having usually under her care the health and habits of some 400 young women from every part of our country.” The Poughkeepsie News, in announcing her resignation, makes mention of the remarkable fact that not a single death occurred among the pupils under her charge, during her eight years of administration....

Dr. Avery also devoted her efforts to Women’s Suffrage. At the 1876 annual meeting of the American Women’s Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Dr. Avery was listed as the president of the Colorado Women’s Suffrage Association. In 1877, she made application to the Denver Medical Association, but the application was indefinitely postponed.

Women physicians continued to make their homes in Colorado during the 1870s. Colorado Springs, a new town founded in 1871, was home to Dr. Julia E. Loomis, an 1870 graduate of the Cleveland Women’s Homeopathic College. This institution was one of the female medical colleges established to offer education to women who wanted to pursue medicine. It and other women’s medical colleges were a result of the work of Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwood and Dr. Maria E. Zackrzewka who began a hospital in 1856- 1857, that offered hands-on education and experience to women in a practical setting. Although Dr. Loomis may have been practicing medicine prior to her two years at Cleveland’s college, she went to school after the death of her only daughter at the age of 52., Family stories have her living in Colorado as early as 1876. Documents, such as ads in the local Gazette newspaper, show she definitely was living in town by 1878.

While Dr. Avery may have been the first female physician to remain in Colorado for an extended period of time, she was not the only one.

DR. ALIDA C. AVERY, M.D. A GRADUATE OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND A PROFESSOR FROM VASSAR COLLEGE, WAS ONE OF COLORADO’S FIRST PRACTICING FEMALE PHYSICIANS.

Manitou, a near neighbor and also new town, was home to Dr. Harriett Leonard. Like Dr. Loomis, family histories place her in the region in 1876. Dr. Leonard graduated from the Keokuk School of Physicians and Surgeons in Keokuk, Iowa. This school was one of the first co-ed schools in the nation. Originally located in LaPorte, Indiana, in 1849, the school moved to Keokuk and began classes in November 1850. The school was the Medical Department of the State University of Iowa, located in Iowa City, Iowa. As a result of this association, when the University became the first publicly supported university to be co-educational in 1870, the school in Keokuk, by mandate had to accept female students into the medical program.

Other early female physicians to the Pikes Peak Region were Dr. Esther B. Holmes, in 1878 and Dr. Clarabel Rowe, in 1879. Dr. Holmes was born in 1844 in Rhode Island. She received her medical license in 1882. Born around 1833 in Massachusetts, Dr. Rowe received her license in 1881. Dr. Rowe, also active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, gave talks and traveled on behalf of the organization. Were these women and Dr. Loomis friends? Quite possibly. Like Dr. Loomis, both women were graduates of the Cleveland Women’s Homeopathic College a year later. Additionally, the death certificate for Dr. Loomis was signed by E. B. Holmes. In 1888 both Dr. Rowe and Dr. Holmes traveled together through Southern California.

While Dr. Loomis was building her practice and caring for her extended family in Colorado Springs, and Dr. Leonard was working as the proprietor at the Manitou Spa, in the town of Leadville, Dr. Mary Helen Barker Bates was making her mark on the town in its early days.

In the 1879 Leadville City Directory, Dr. Bates is the only woman listed among the towns thirty-four physicians. She had settled in Leadville with her husband George C. Bates, an attorney. The two remained there until his health forced the couple to move to Denver around 1881. In Denver, Dr. Mary Helen Barker Bates made history as the first woman in Colorado to be appointed to the staff of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in 1885. Dr. Bates went on to serve as a member of the Denver Board of Education, as Vice-President of the Colorado Medical Society, and as Colorado’s Delegate to the 1904 Pan-American Medical Congress.

In 1878, Dr. Julia A. Adams left New York to take up residence in Chaffee County, Colorado at the Cottonwood Hot Springs. Dr. Adams and her husband the Reverend J.A. Adams purchased the Cottonwood Hot Springs near present day Buena Vista, Colorado. Shortly after this purchase, half interest went to George K. Hartenstein, a Buena Vista attorney and the son-in-law of Dr. Adam. They invested around $50,000 to build a hotel/resort on the property as a health resort. All materials were hauled to the site over the mountain from Colorado Springs as no train ran through that area. The Rev. and Dr. Adams, after leaving the region became involved with Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science movement. Some records say it was Rev. Adams who coined the phrase ‘Christian Science.’

Unlike the accepted idea of the lone female physician, facing prejudice, Colorado’s pioneering women physicians were accepted into and licensed by the State of Colorado Medical Association after 1881; they practiced and were part of medical organizations; they served on professional boards; many were married with families. They made their mark on the area they lived in. But how did they interact with their male counterparts in this time period? How were they perceived in Colorado?

The Colorado Medical Society, formed in September 1871, initially was an all-male institution. Previously, in 1860, there was the Jefferson Medical Society, which ended as the Civil War began about a year later. In 1864 the Denver Medical Society formed, but it also folded after a year. In 1868 the Colorado Territorial Medical Society was formed, again only lasting for approximately a year. In April 1871, the Denver Medical Society was formed, which is still in existence. In 1872 the Colorado Medical Society was formed and was affiliated with the American Medical Society, which began in 1847.

In Women Physicians in Colorado, Mary De Mund noted that women were initially rejected for membership in the medical organizations. However, further research shows that women had supporters from within the organization. The seventh president of the Colorado Medical Society, Dr. W.H. Williams, 1876-1877, a former Confederate soldier and graduate of Tulane University, pushed for the State Board of Health to reorganize and for laws to regulate the practice of medicine, including recognizing the ‘female practitioner.’ This included the idea that just having a diploma and saying you were a doctor or having a diploma from a questionable school was not sufficient to practice medicine. Williams also advocated that

At the time, Dr. Williams’s ideas were not far-fetched. In 1876 the American Medical Association welcomed its first female member, a delegate from Illinois, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson. Williams’s ideas were initially rejected, but in the annual meeting of the Colorado Medical Society in June 1877, a motion was made that women who had attended a regular school of medicine should be allowed to attend and participate in the meetings of the medical society. This resolution was tabled by a vote of ten to four. At this same meeting, it was decided that Dr. Alida Avery, who was endorsed by a Dr. McBeth, an Irish born physician who had come to Colorado in the 1870s from Ohio, could not be admitted, as she was not a member of a local society. This was not a win for Dr. Avery or the female physician, but it was a crack in the bastion of male doctors. By 1881, the state of Colorado, then just five years old, began licensing physicians. At that time, men and women were licensed equally. That same year, forty year-old Dr. Edith Root, license number 89, became what is believed to be the first woman to receive a medical license in the state of Colorado when the state began the process in that same year. Dr. Root along with Dr. Avery and Dr. Bates were admitted to the Denver Medical Society around the same time. In 1888, Dr. Rilla Hay, at the time practicing in Pueblo, Colorado, was admitted to the Colorado Medical Society.

In 1887, another of Dr. W. H. Williams’s ideas came to fruition with the graduation of Dr. Eleanor Lawney from the Denver School of Medicine. After graduation, Dr. Lawney was on the staff of St. Luke’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado.

A closer look at Dr. Susan Anderson and her contemporaries will show their stories were different from the concept people may believe was the life of women physicians during Dr. Anderson’s time in 1890s Colorado. These physicians worked in large and small towns alike, but their goal was to make life better for themselves, their patients and the population in general.

Dr. Susan Anderson, arrived at Barry, Colorado, later Anaconda, in the Cripple Creek/Victor mining district, in 1892, along with her father, brother, and step-mother. In September 1893 Susan left to attend medical school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Graduating in 1897, she returned to Cripple Creek, and worked to establish a medical practice there. According to her biography, there were 55 physicians and 10 dentists for the 30,000 people in the district. Dr. Anderson stayed in Cripple Creek for three years, then moved to Denver, then to Greeley, and finally, after 1907, to Fraser where her legend grew. In Fraser she was the only doctor for miles. Not accepted initially, she went on to care for the loggers, ranchers and then railroad workers on the Moffatt tunnel. She became the county coroner. All of this from a woman who went to Fraser to either die from her tuberculosis or cure herself. Her story was told in newspapers and magazines. Her alma mater, the University of Michigan, included a short piece in the Michigan Alumnus in which Dr. Anderson was quoted as saying, “it took a while for people here to realize I was competent. I had two reasons why I simply had to make good. First, I had to prove a woman could be a good doctor. Secondly, I graduated from a great school. I couldn’t bring shame upon the school….”

A look at the other women practicing medicine during the 1890s to 1900 also offers a broader perspective on the female medical practitioner. Although women physicians continued to come to Colorado, the 1890s saw an increase in the number of women doctors arriving in the state. City and business directories bear this out. The 1894 Colorado Springs directory lists five women physicians, where only two were listed in 1879. In the Cripple Creek 1900 city directory, there were over 50 physicians listed in the Cripple Creek/ Victor mining district, including at least five women. Due to the fluidity of movement of the population in the mining district not all physicians were included in their directories.

A look at some of Dr. Anderson’s contemporaries reveals that these women set about to not only practice medicine, but to make significant social and political changes while doing so. Before Dr. Anderson took a child with appendicitis on the train from Fraser to Denver and confront the on-call doctor in that city, women had been working at and with hospitals long before that date. One of the most controversial was Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates, who arrived in Denver in 1891. She had been the first woman intern (1882- 1883) at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She received that position after a grueling exam in which she beat out a number of male candidates. She studied in Vienna from 1883-1884. Returning to Chicago, she was a professor of anatomy at the Woman’s Medical College in Chicago from 1884-1889. In Colorado she was involved in the Woman’s Suffrage movement and was part of the group that affected the passage of the 1893 referendum which gave Colorado women the right to vote. Dr. Bates also championed a strict adherence to the state’s liquor and gambling laws. Of the nineteen months Dr. Bates served as an intern in Chicago, she stated she worked in the morgue, and took part in fourteen amputations and later said of that time, “the first six months were hell, the second six months were purgatory, the next six months were heaven; when it came time for me to leave, I wept bitter tears.” In 1909 Dr. Bates developed a comprehensive bill “The (Bates) Colorado Law for the Examination and Care of Public School Children”. This bill provided for the testing in the first month of each school year the sight, hearing and lung capacity of each child in Colorado schools. It also included a provision for referring children with remedial defects to a competent medical professional. This bill passed in June 1909.

Dr. Josepha Williams, from Virginia, and Dr. Madeline Marquette, a graduate of the Gross Medical College in Colorado, opened a private hospital and sanatorium in Denver in 1889. In 1892 they added a nursing school to the hospital-Sanatorium. In failing health, Dr. Marquette moved to Evergreen, Colorado, and in 1914 she opened offices in Denver where she continued to practice on a limited basis until 1932.

Dr. Ida Putnam, born in Wisconsin, began her practice in Chicago, after graduating from Herring Medical College in that city. In 1898 she moved to Colorado, receiving her Colorado license that year. She moved to Telluride, San Miguel County, Colorado, and set up a practice. Beyond the fact that her 1896 application for medical license shows her age as 33, her life story remains a mystery at this time.

Dr. Genevieve M Tucker wrote Mother, Baby and Nursery: A Manuel for Mothers, a 160-plus page book in 1896. Her reason for writing is best explained in the preface, “The aim of this book is to be a guide to mothers, particularly young and inexperienced ones. It proposes to teach and help a mother understand her babe, to feed it properly, to place it in healthful surroundings, and to watch its growth and development with intelligence, and thus relieve in a measure the undue anxiety and nervous uncertainty of a new mother.” Dr. Tucker was appalled with the rate of infant mortality, and to that end, as she wrote in her introduction, “Decrease in infant mortality will be brought about more by strict hygiene and prevention of sickness than by any treatment of disease already begun, no matter how skillfully applied.” She practiced in Pueblo, Colorado. Around 1898 she was elected president of the Colorado Homeopathic Medical Society. The feeling was that Dr. Tucker could do much to unite the sometimes-divided forces on the practices used by various physicians within the society and promote the cause of homeopathy.

Two other women physicians made huge impacts on Colorado and the world at large: Dr. Florence Sabin and Dr. Rose Kidd Beere.

Dr. Florence Sabin did much to advance medical research. Born in Central City, Colorado, in 1871, Sabin became the first woman to be admitted to John Hopkins School of Medicine, in 1896. In 1917, she was the first woman appointed professor of histology at John Hopkins. In 1925, she became a full-time staffer at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. After retiring around 1939, Dr. Sabin returned to Colorado. Dr. Sabin was known for her research on blood cells and the lymphatic system. Her research also helped scientists to understand the bacteria that was a cause of tuberculous. To many, she was known as the ‘First Lady of American Science.

Dr. Rose Kidd Beere participated in the Spanish-American war (1898-1899) and in World War I (1914—1919). At the time of the Spanish-American war, the Army would not take women doctors, so Dr. Beere served as a nurse along with seven additional women from Red Cross organizations of California and Oregon in that conflict in the Phillipines. Originally from Wabash, Indiana, Dr. Beere married an attorney from New Mexico. She had three sons, all born in New Mexico. Her husband passed away in 1889 and she returned to Indiana, attending Northwestern University Women’s Medical College and graduating in 1892. She arrived in Colorado around 1894 and began her practice in Durango, Colorado. Three years later she took the position of Superintendent of the State Home for Dependent Children in Denver. There is a story, recounted in her hometown newspaper, that her father, Meredith, an Army major, who at one time commanded the 10th Calvary in Kansas, wrote to Rose about how disappointed he was that the 1898 conflict was the first war in the country’s history that would have no family member fighting in it. This story is one reason given for Rose going to the Philippines. It is said she was the first woman to go to war in the Philippines, arriving on the USAT Arizona. While there, she would at times go onto the battlefield to treat both American and Filipino soldiers. In 1900 she was appointed to the Colorado State Board of Arbitration and in 1912 was appointed superintendent of the County Hospital, possibly the Denver County Hospital, the first woman to have that position. At the time of her retirement from the hospital “the staff of one hundred physicians and surgeons passed resolution to the effect that her administration had been the most efficient, economical and satisfactory that the hospital had ever known.”

This look at Dr. Anderson’s contemporaries would not be complete without Dr. Katharine C. Polly. Dr. Polly resided in the Cripple Creek/ Victor mining district during the time Dr. Anderson was working there. Dr. Polly and her husband, Dr. John B. Polly, applied for their Colorado license in 1896, receiving license numbers 2307 and 2306 respectively. They had a residence and pharmacy in Elkton, Colorado. According to the 1900 Cripple Creek city directory, Katharine had an office in Cripple Creek. In early 1900, Dr. Polly was associated with the Teller County Medical Society and the Colorado Department of Education, as the superintendent for Teller County.

While many women physicians focused on treating women and children, others like Dr. Anderson, who also set broken bones, treated both men and women as did the physicians who attended soldiers in combat settings such as Dr. Beere. There were those who worked in mental health facilities, like Dr. Mary Alice Lake. Regardless of the time or situation, these women doctors did what they were trained to do.

Why did female physicians choose to practice medicine in Colorado? Some, such as Dr. Anderson, came seeking a cure for tuberculosis. Others, such as Julia Loomis and Dr. Leonard, may have chosen Colorado for the option to practice without the prejudice they may have experienced further east.

There were others who chose Colorado as the place to practice their craft. The names of women doctors who might have been in the state prior to 1881 are hard to determine. After 1881, the names are easier to locate. The following is a partial list of women doctors who came to Colorado from 1881-1900. Their stories and accomplishments are too numerous to include in this document, but their names are just as important as those already discussed. Below is a sample of the women who applied for a Colorado license after 1881.

Some of the early arrivals are: Elnora Anderson— Ellen J Bell—Flora M Betz—Mary Bradner—Henrietta L Buckner– Kate C Bushnell—Stella M Clarke—Clara A Cox– Martha E Cunningham—Sarah Edson—Lizzie E Joy- Julia G McNutt –Celestia D Messinger— Caroline L Parker—Sarah E Somerby—Eleanor Van Atta—Rilla G. Hay

After 1890, during Dr. Anderson’s time, the partial list includes: Genevieve M Tucker—Eugenia Reinhardt—Josephine L Peavey—Josephine Paddock- Hannah Taylor Muir—Sarah A. Goff—Jean Bailey Clow—Louisa T Black—Sara E Bacon—Frona Abbott

—Doris A. McCraw is an Author, Speaker, and Historian-specializing in Colorado and Women’s History. She is a member of National League of American Pen Women, Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, Western Fictioneers and the Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners. She also writes fiction under the pen name, Angela Raines. She is a regular contributor to Saddlebag Dispatches, focusing primarily on the role of women in shaping western history.