Working on Wednesday: Mary Reed Stratton, M.D. (1869 - 1949)

My connection to Mary C. Reed Stratton is rather remote (she's a third cousin, three times removed*) but I want to pay tribute to a pioneering Colorado doctor.

I found this biography of her in The History of Colorado, published in 1918:

 

[History of Colorado; Wilbur Fiske Stone ed.(1833-1920). Publication date: 1918.

Source: Archive.org]

Here's a description of the medical school Dr. Reed Stratton graduated from in 1892 which was then called the Women's Medical College of Chicago, including her listing in the book:

[Alumnae of the Woman’s Medical College of Chicago--1859-1896. Source: Library of Congress]

From the 1920 Journal of the Colorado Medical Society I learned that Dr. Reed Stratton had headed east for further special training.

[Colorado Medicine, Volumes 17-18. Source: Google Books.]

And here's her obituary in the Rocky Mountain Medical Journal:

[Rocky Mountain Medical Journal published by the Colorado Medical Society. Source: Archive.org]

*Our common ancestor is my maternal fifth great grandfather William Sill (1757-1841). I discovered this pioneering female doctor while researching the probate records of Ann Sill, who bequeathed property to Mary's great grandmother Martha (Sill) Penny and her grandmother Margaret (Penny) Miller.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Opal May Slater (1890 - 1973) Part 3

In previous posts we've had a view of my great aunt's teaching career which culminated in her becoming one of the first women to receive an advanced degree from Harvard.*

The next record we have for Opal is in the 1922 Denver City Directory where she was living with her mother Rufina on Marine Street. Opal is described as "with L&S D G Co" but I haven't been able to discover what company that was.

[Title : Denver, Colorado, City Directory, 1922. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: 

Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.]

Opal's name appears again the same year in a Denver Rocky Mountain News calendar of events and a Denver Post article about the local Y.M.C.A.'s "Annual Budget Week."

[Date: Friday, February 10, 1922   Paper: Denver Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Colorado)   Page: 13  

© This entire service and/or content portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or its content providers.

Source: GenealogyBank.com]

[Date: Sunday, January 29, 1922   Paper: Denver Post (Denver, Colorado)   Page: 20  

This entire product and/or portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004.

Source: GenealogyBank.com]

It's not clear to me when Opal returned to Massachusetts but in the Hartford Courant she was described as a graduate Yale Law School** Class of 1927 and had just been elected to the Order of the Coif.

[Hartford Courant Hartford, Connecticut. Tuesday, June 21, 1927

Source: Newspapers.com]

This 1928 Boston Herald piece includes her name among the 28 women who passed the state bar examination.

[Date: Wednesday, February 29, 1928   Paper: Boston Herald (Boston, Massachusetts)   Page: 6  

This entire product and/or portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004.

Source: GenealogyBank.com]

And here's her listing in the 1929 Boston City Directory.

[Title : Boston, Massachusetts, City Directory, 1929.

Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA:

Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.]

She was the only one of Lewis Logan Slater's children to follow him into the legal profession.


*Links here and here
**Yes, THAT Yale.
***You can read about its history here.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Opal May Slater (1890 - 1973) Part 2

Looking through newspapers I was able to find out more about Opal's teaching career before she left for Harvard than was apparent using city directories and census lists.

In 1913 she was granted a Teacher's Certificate for second grade in Kansas according to The Eureka Herald and Greenwood County Republican. 

[Source: Newspapers.com]

Later that year the same newspaper's social pages identified Opal as a teacher at Hamilton Schools while reporting on her visit to her uncle James Slater.

[Source: Newspapers.com]

The next time I found Opal's name was in a May of 1916 list of people receiving first grade Teachers' Certificates in  The Santa Fe New Mexican.

[Source: Newspapers.com]

From this clipping from The Clayton Citizen we learn Opal's job in New Mexico was Principal of the local high school.

[Source: Newspapers.com]

[Detail of Union County, New Mexico, including Clayton from Clason's Guide Map Of New Mexico. Published By The Clason Map Co. Denver, Colorado. Copyrighted 1915 by The Clason Map Co. Denver, Colo. 1916 Edition. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

Here's another story from the same source mentioned Opal as the assistant director of the school play.*

[Source: Newspapers.com]

*This isn't the first time I found Opal connected with the stage as you can see in this 1912 clipping from The Denver Rocky Mountain News. (And that's not counting her interest in Aesthetic Dance.)

[Source: GenealogyBank.com]

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.