REMEMBER THE LADIES

Post by Doris McCraw
writing as Angela Raines

View on the route up Pikes Peak which was submitted by
Julia Archibald Holmes in 1858
Photo property of the author

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband in which she said, "I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

Those were strong words and in 1920 the nineteenth amendment to the constitution was passed. This year we celebrate the centennial of that event. Although the suffrage movement started on the Eastern coast, it was the women of the Westward movement who exercised those rights prior to 1920.

In Colorado, even before becoming a state, the papers were discussing the suffrage movement. The Central City newspaper in the 1860s was publishing articles on the subject. The Colorado State Medical Society as early as 1876 introduced the idea of women being admitted to that organization. On a side note, the American Medical Society admitted a female doctor from Illinois in 1874.

Dr. Alida Avery
image from Wikipedia

Although women doctors were not admitted to the Colorado Medical Society in 1876, they started their own society. Alida Avery, MD, left Vassar College, where she was a professor and physician, moved to Colorado in 1874, and was heavily involved in the early suffrage movement.

Dr. Mary Helen Barker Bates, who had moved to Colorado from Utah in 1878 with her attorney husband, was instrumental as part of the group of women who reorganized the movement to work for the passage of suffrage in Colorado. The result, in 1893, Colorado added the right of women to vote to the state's constitution.

Colorado Suffrage Movement 1893
image from Wikipedia 

Women in Western states enjoyed more rights and freedoms than their sisters in the East. Wyoming and Utah allowed women to vote before Colorado. Additionally, California began licensing physicians as early as 1876 and women were licensed just the same as men.

Most of my research is on those early Colorado women doctors, but there were women ranch owners, business owners, outlaws and teachers whose lives made an impact on the state. So the next time you watch an early Western and see a strong female character, don't think it was an anomaly, it was probably truer than you realize. When you read between the lines of some of the news reports from the time, you will find, we need to remember the Ladies.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

Books: Angela Raines Books

Pueblo, The State Asylum and Women Doctors

Pueblo, Colorado is one of the early towns along the front range of Colorado. It began as a business fort located near the confluence of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River. It was where Zebulon Pike built a stockade when he made his attempt to climb the peak that was named after him. Needless to say, he didn't make it. He even went so far as to say it could never be climbed. (Don't tell all those people who annually run the marathon from the base to the top and back again). Before 1900 Pueblo was one of the larger communities in the state.  

1890 map of Pueblo Colorado from World Maps online

It originally was separate towns which eventually became one. South Pueblo was the town that was created for the workers who manufactured steel for the rails of William Jackson Palmer‘s Denver & Rio Grande railroad. This in manufacturing plant became CF&I (Colorado Fuel & Iron) a major employer in the early days of the town and a great history read. 

Main Office- CF&I from Wikipedia

Pueblo also became the home of the Colorado State Insane Asylum, later known as the Colorado State Hospital. On October 23, 1879 it opened its doors to eleven patients, nine men and two women, from around the state.

The asylum also was an early institution to hire women doctors.  One such was Mary Alice Lake. Lake was born in 1865 and was a graduate of the  University of Colorado School of Medicine and received her  state license in 1896. She was an assistant physician at the State Asylum but also had a practiced in Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1896. 

Additional women also practiced medicine in the Pueblo area. Some who practiced before 1900 were:

Lizzie E. Jones born in Iowa in 1854 and graduated from the State University of Iowa in 1881. She was also one of the early female doctors to receive a license on January 3, 1882 , # 343 and had a  practiced in Pueblo. In June of 1882 she married Reuben F. Eldridge.

Mary F. Barry was born in 1859 in Illinois and attended Northwestern University Women’s Medical College where she graduated in 1887. She received her license to practice medicine in Colorado in 1895 and had her practice in Pueblo.  During her career she was the secretary of the Pueblo County Medical Society.

There is also a Genevieve M. Tucker who was born in Wisconsin in 1859 who received her Colorado license in 1893 and is listed as also practicing in Pueblo. Dr. Tucker wrote the book "Mother, Baby, and Nursery: A Manual for Mothers" in 1896. She was also elected president of the Colorado Homeopathic Society in 1898.

And if course one cannot forget Rilla G. Hay. Dr. Hay was an 1873 graduate of the University of Iowa Medical College and received her Colorado license in 1885. She had a practice in Pueblo, She was an assistant physician at the Asylum, and later moved to Denver where she continued her education. She was also the first woman to be admitted to the Colorado Medical Society, which had been founded in 1871.

There are more stories of women doctors in Pueblo, and the rip roaring outlaws and lawmen, but that is for a latter time. 

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Which Dr. Bates?

For those who might not make it to the Western Fictioneers Convention this September, I thought I would share a bit of information about two Colorado women doctors who had a medical practice prior to 1900, who just happened to have the same first and last names. Here are the brief stories of  the Doctors Mary Bates.

First, a bit of context for their stories. Colorado became a state in 1876, hence the name 'The Centennial State'. The theory about Colorado's lateness in mass settlement is that people did not believe you could cross over the many fourteen thousand foot peaks. Of course there were the mountain men in the early 1800s, but it took a gold rush in 1859 to prove that theory wrong. From that point on the state saw an influx of gold seekers, and businesses that provided goods and services to said prospectors. 

Following the gold and silver seekers were the health seekers. Many found the clear, cold and thin air of Colorado to be beneficial to their health. With the health seekers came the physicians and others who offered their services to the ill. Into that mix came the women physicians who also wished to practice medicine. There were many women who took advantage of the opportunities afforded them in this new area. The first Dr. Bates arrived around 1878.

Dr. Mary Helen Barker Bates was born December 17, 1845 in Hannibel, Oswergo County, New York. She was the daughter of Dr. Ezra Barker and Jane Ruth Freeman. Mary graduated from the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia in 1873.  That same year she moved to Utah, where some sources say she began an Obstetrics School for women in Salt Lake City. The family site states she was 'Brigham Young's Family Physician'. While still in Utah she met and married attorney George Clinton Bates in 1876. By 1878 Mary and George moved to Leadville, Colorado. There the two practiced their vocations. In the 1879 Leadville City Directory, Dr. Bates is the only female physician listed along with the other thirty-four doctors.

Leadville 1881- from Pinterest

Leadville sits at 10,152 feet above sea level in the Colorado Rockies. It is currently the highest incorporated town in North America. (The honor for highest town originally went to Altman, Colorado at 10,630 feet, but it is now a ghost town). During the 1870s and 80s it was a booming mining town. It was in Leadville that the Guggenheims, and Horace Tabor made a fortune in silver. Doc Holliday and possibly even members of the James gang were in Leadville for a time.  

By 1881 Dr. Bates and husband moved to Denver, Colorado for George's health. It was also 1881 that Colorado started licensing physicians and Mary Helen was one of the early one. (Her license number was 271). It was 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. She also was a member of the Denver Board of Education, Vice-President of the Colorado Medical Society and Colorado's Delegate to the Pan-American Medical Congress. Dr. Mary Helen Barker Bates passed away on August 3, 1924 in Denver at the age of 78.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates was born in February 25, 1861 in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin to William Wallace Bates, a ship builder, and Mary Cole Bates, a physician. She arrived in Denver in 1891. Prior to arriving in Colorado she was the first woman intern (1882-1883) at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She achieved this position after a grueling exam in which she beat out a number of male candidates. After her internship she studied in Vienna from 1883-1884, which a number of physicians both male and female did. Upon her return 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. In 1909 Dr. Bates developed a bill “The (Bates) Colorado Law for the Examination and Care of Public School Children” which passed in June of 1909. Dr. Bates also championed a strict adherence to the liquor and gambling laws of the state. 

Cook County Hospital-Chicago Illinois 1882 - from Pinterest

Of her time as an intern at Cook County Hospital, Dr. Bates says of the nineteen months she worked as in intern, she worked in the morgue, took part in fourteen amputations. Of her time there she later said “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..."  Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates passed away September 18, 1854 at the age of 93. 

For those who think women had a hard time practicing medicine, they did, but in Colorado the hard times were probably not a tough as other areas of the country. The West was opening up and doctors were needed, regardless of there gender.

Of course I've included women doctors in my writing. 

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Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Member of National League of American Pen Women,

Women Writing the West,

Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

Photo and Poem: Click Here 

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

  

THE TWO DOCTOR BATES--BY DORIS MCCRAW

GUEST BLOGGER DORIS MCCRAW IS VISITING WITH US THIS WEEKEND ABOUT HER RESEARCH ON EARLY WOMEN DOCTORS.

Before 1900, Denver had two women doctors with the same name: Dr. Mary Bates. Although there is still so much to learn about these two women, their stories so far are still the stuff of legends. The stories can and will lead to so much more.

Putting their stories into context, Colorado became a state in 1876. The early days of Colorado were filled with people seeking gold and other minerals to be found in the high mountains. If they weren’t searching for gold, remember the 1859 “Pikes Peak or Bust” slogan, they were providing services and goods for the searchers. There also was an influx of people who found the Colorado climate beneficial for their health. This combination lead many women to brave the new territory to practice their medical skills.

MINE IN LEADVILLE IN 1908
The first Dr. Bates to arrive was Mary Helen Barker Bates (b.1845-d.1934). She was the daughter of Dr. Ezra Barker who had a practice in New York. This Mary graduated from the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Before she moved to Colorado she practiced in Salt Lake City, Utah, where some of her patients were the family of Mormon leader Brigham Young. (The family site said she was “Brigham Young's Family Physician”. There she met and married George Bates in 1876. Two years later in 1878, at the age of 33, she and George moved to the mining town of Leadville, Colorado where George was an attorney and Mary practiced medicine.

Leadville, for those who don’t know, sits at 10,152 feet above sea level in the Colorado Rockies. During the 1870's- 80's it was a booming town. It was here the Guggenheims, Horace Tabor and others made their fortunes in silver. Even Doc Holliday spent time there.

From the Hayden survey of the Colorado Territory in July of 1869. Two miles south of Georgetown on the Denver road.
While there, one source says Dr. Bates founded the Ladies Relief Hospital. In 1881 she and George moved to Denver for his health. When Colorado started licensing physicians in 1881, Mary was one of the first women licensed by the State. (Her license #271). She took special interest in Woman’s Suffrage, children and education. She introduced the Colorado Law for the Examination and Care of Public School Children which went into effect in 1910.

"Denver in 1898"
Our second Mary, Mary Elizabeth Bates (b.1851 d.1954) arrived in Denver in 1891. Prior to arriving in Colorado she was the first woman intern (1882-1883) at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois after a grueling exam in which she beat out a number of male candidates. She studied in Vienna from 1883-1884. Upon her return she was a professor of anatomy at the Woman’s Medical College in Chicago from 1884-1889. After moving to Colorado she also 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. This Dr. Mary Bates also was a champion of the strict adherence to the liquor and gambling laws of the state. Her other passion was animal rights and prior to her death in 1954 she created the Mary Elizabeth Bates Foundation for animal care.