Isabel Barrows
| Isabel Chapin Barrows | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | April 17, 1845 Irasburg, Vermont |
| Died | October 24, 1913 (aged 68) Croton-on-Hudson, New York |
| Alma mater | Adams Academy, Derry, NH, Woman's Medical College, New York, New York |
| Occupation | Stenographer |
| Spouse(s) | William Wilberforce Chapin d. 1865, Samuel June Barrows |
| Children | Mabel Hay Barrows (m. Henry Raymond Mussey.) |
Isabel 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. She later became the first woman to work for Congress as a stenographer. Barrows was also one of the first women to attend the University of Vienna to study ophthalmology, and the first woman to have a private practice in medicine in Washington, D.C..Not to mention the first female ophthalmologist.
Born to Scottish immigrants, Henry Hayes and Anna Gibb on April 17, 1845, in Irasburg, Vermont, Katherine Isabel Hayes was the fifth of seven children. After receiving her primary education in Derry, New Hampshire, Isabel enrolled at the Adams Academy in Derry, originally run by Zilpah P. Grant Banister and Mary Lyon. After graduating from Adams Academy, she married William Wilberforce Chapin in Derry on September 26, 1863.
In 1863 she when she was 18 she accompanied her husband William Chapin to India where they worked as missionaries in Ahmednuggur. William Wilberforce Chapin died in 1865 in Ahmednuggur, leaving her a widow at the age of nineteen. Although she had lost her partner and the original reason for initially traveling to India, Isabel stayed on and completed her missionary work and returning to the United States six months later.
Starting up a life on her own, she moved to Dansville, New York and became a bath assistant at a water-cure sanatorium. At the sanatorium she was trained in hydropathy and incidentally met the man who was to become her second husband, Samuel June Barrows. Ending her work at the sanatorium, Isabel and Samuel became engaged in 1866 and the couple moved to New York City. On June 28, 1867, Isabel Chapin and Samuel Barrows were married in Brooklyn by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
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