Isabel Barrows

Isabel Chapin Barrows
BornApril 17, 1845
DiedOctober 24, 1913(1913-10-24) (aged 68)
Alma materAdams Academy, Derry, N.H.,
Woman's Medical College, New York, New York,
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Occupation(s)Physician, ophthalmologist, congressional stenographer, college professor, missionary
Spouses
ChildrenMabel Hay Barrows[1] (m. Henry Raymond Mussey)

(Katherine) Isabel Hayes Chapin Barrows (April 17, 1845 – October 24, 1913) was the first woman employed by the United States State Department. She worked as a stenographer for William H. Seward in 1868 while her husband, Samuel June Barrows, was ill.[2] She later became the first woman to work for Congress as a stenographer.[3] Barrows was also one of the first women to attend the University of Vienna to study ophthalmology, the first American woman in medical practice as an ophthalmologist,[4] and the first woman to have a private practice in medicine in Washington, D.C.

  1. ^ Lamb, Daniel Smith (1900), Howard University Medical Department, Washington, D.C.: A Historical Biographical and Statistical Souvenir, Washington, DC: Howard University Medical Department, p. 117
  2. ^ Balakian, Peter (2004), The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, HarperCollins, pp. 15–17, ISBN 978-0-06-055870-3, By virtue of her talent at the new "science" of stenography, she was called on in June, 1868 to fill in for her ill husband, then secretary to William Seward, President Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State...
  3. ^ Pepper, Bryan; Wetmore, Misty, Gender Images of Congressional Life from Behind the Typewriter, archived from the original on 2008-08-27, retrieved 2007-12-19
  4. ^ Alice R. McPherson, Daniel M. Albert (2015). "Two Pioneer 19th-Century Women Who Breached Ophthalmology's Glass Ceiling". Ophthalmology. 122 (6): 1067–69. doi:10.1016/j.ophtha.2014.11.020. PMID 26008907.