West Virginia's First Female Doctors

by Kate Quinn
May, 2007

Eliza Hughes

Eliza Hughes was born in Wheeling in 1817. Her father Thomas Hughes served in the War of 1812, owned extensive lumber yards in Wheeling, a controlling interest in three steamboats, was President of the Wheeling Savings Institution, President of the Wheeling Fire Insurance company, was a member of the Wheeling City Council for 32 years, was the first Treasurer of the City of wheeling, President of the Board of Trade and Director and President of the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company which built the Suspension Bridge.

Her brother Alfred began practicing medicine in Wheeling in 1850 and he successfully dealt with a cholera epidemic in Fulton in 1854. He also successfully treated diphtheria and scarcely lost a single case. He was a “homeopathic” practitioner and specialized in diseases of women, especially uterine and cancerous problems.

It was at this time that Eliza became interested in medicine and began studying her brother’s medical books. She then attended the Western Homeopathic college of Cleveland and then Penn Medical University in Philadelphia. She returned to Wheeling and began practicing with her brother Alfred at 14th and Chapline St.

As the Civil War approached, Eliza wrote to Jefferson Davis offering her services as a doctor. Wheeling citizens with known Southern sympathies were required to give a loyalty oath to the Union and when he refused, her brother Alfred was jailed at Camp Chase in Colombus, Ohio. She herself refused, but then later recanted after being jailed. In 1863, Alfred was released from jail and moved to Richmond where he served in the state legislature until the end of the war.

In 1864, Eliza again set up practice, this time in her mother’s house at 289 Main Street. The city of Wheeling did not license doctors at that time and the city directory did not list Eliza Hughes as a physician although 18 male doctors were listed as physicians in the business directory. Eliza was not a member of the West Virginia Medical Society (formed in 1870) probably because of the ongoing feud between MD’s and homeopathic doctors.

Eliza never married. For a time she lived in Baltimore with her brother Alfred’s son-in- law who was also a doctor. But by 1882 she was back in Wheeling. She died that same year while treating a patient in Portland, Ohio.


HARRIET JONES

Harriet Jones was born in Edensburg, Pennsylvania in 1856 and moved with her family to Terra Alta when she was six years old where her father was a general merchandiser, lumber dealer, and active in Republican politics, serving three terms in the state legislature. She was the oldest of 5 children and attended public school in Preston County. Since there was no high school available, she attended Wheeling Female College at the age of 12 and graduated in 1875 with a “fine musical education”.

There were not many opportunities available for careers for women, so Harriet spent three years taking “Chautauqua” courses before enrolling in the Women’s Medical College of Baltimore where she graduated with honors in 1884. Harriet Jones had her choice of 19 medical schools, which admitted women and probably chose Baltimore because it was on the B & O line connected to her home in Preston County.

After graduation, she took further courses in gynecology and abdominal surgery in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia and then traveled for a few months before opening her private medical practice in Wheeling in September of 1885. She was licensed to practice in West Virginia in 1885.

Dr. Jones served as the assistant superintendent of West Virginia Hospital for the Insane for the next three and a half years. By 1890,there were 411 white women and 26 black compared to 442 men. She was the only female doctor on the staff and received a salary of $680 per year. While in Weston, she organized the Society of the White Cross, a temperance group. She later belonged to the women’s Christian Temperance Union in West Virginia.

On her return to Wheeling in 1898, Harriet was allowed entrance to the Ohio County Medical Society. She then established a women’s hospital, on the south side of 14th st on the alley between Eoff and Jacob and later moved the hospital to the southeast corner of 15th and Jacob Streets. Her hospital lasted 20 years.

While running her hospital, she found time to organize two boys clubs, one The White Cross League, a purity organization and anti-smoking club. They met regularly for years in the basement of the hospital, and she never allowed anything to keep her away from these meetings. The purity organization was an attempt to combat the frequenting of prostitutes. She also lectured high school boys and girls around the state on “Sex Hygiene”

Her interest in Public Health led her to become secretary of the West Virginia Anti-Tuberculosis League and to lobby the state legislature to establish the West Virginia Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Hopemont, near Terra Alta, in 1913. Because West Virginia was a segregated state, she later founded the West Virginia State Colored Tuberculosis Sanitarium at Denmar, Pocohantas County in 1917.

By this time, Harriet had moved to Glendale where she met Francis McMahon who had had a false scare with TB that included a stay at the sanitarium near Terra Alta. Jones sent McMahon to the NY School of Social Science for a course in social work. People thought tb was inherited, so Jones, McMahon, and Susan Cooke (West Virginia’s first licensed registered nurse) formed a Health Service traveling through 31 counties, through knee-deep mud and snow from May to October by horse and buggy and later in a Model T. Jones was also successful in getting the B & O to equip an exhibit car which travel the rails of WV aiding the Health Service in their purpose.

How Dr. Jones found time to practice medicine is a mystery as she was so concerned with the welfare of the state’s children that she spent years lobbying the State legislature to establish the West Virginia Industrial Home for Girls in Salem and the West Virginia Children’s Home in Elkins. She visited most of the schools in Wheeling and gave the children free medical exams. Jones helped to start the first domestic science classes in West Virginia schools through her work with the Federation of Women’s Clubs. She also provided the first playground in Wheeling.

Her work to allow women to enter WVU as degree candidates saw success in 1889. She was also very active in the Wheeling suffrage club, and attempted to get the Charter Commission of Wheeling to include a woman suffrage provision in the new charter under consideration. She served as President of the WV Equal Suffrage Association in 1906 and addressed the state legislature in 1907 attempting to persuade them to amend the state constitution to that effect. However, the vote failed. Jones wrote the history of the women’s suffrage movement in WV and after women were given the right to vote became president of the League of Women voters, which grew out of the Natl American Woman Suffrage Association.

1n 1924, Jones won the Marshall County seat in the State House of Delegates where she got bills passed to license midwives and nurses. Harriet spent her later years writing many pamphlets, gardening at her home in Glendale and traveling the world. She died in Glendale in 1943 at the age of 87.


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