writing as Angela Raines
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| View from the cemetery Photo property of the author |
One of the places I walk/hike is a cemetery close to my home. This past week I again walked by the headstone of Anna D. Chamberlain and remembered a post I'd written some time back. It reminded me how amazing she was, although like all females in the medical field in the early days, not much is known. I keep searching but wanted to share the story I wrote on her story again.
Her
name is Anna D. Chamberlain. I initially found her in the 1896
Colorado Springs city directory listed with her husband Frank C.
Chamberlain, also a dentist. Their office was #12 in the bank
building with a residence at 1451 N. Nevada Ave.
Anna
was born in 1866 to John Shaw and Hellen B Shaw in Harlan, Page
County, Iowa. Her father was from Ireland and her mother was born in
Ohio. She married Frank in 1887 and they had three children by 1900.
She died in 1914 at the age of forty-eight.
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| Cemetery in Fall |
According
to her obituary, she and her husband had been associated with
dentistry since 1888. There are indications they practiced in Colorado
Springs, Colorado City, and Manitou Springs. She was one of the
first women and in the first graduating class in the field from the
University in Denver. Her husband was also an M.D. and received his
license in 1892 although there is no mention of his pursuing this
field in Colorado Springs. That would make sense since there were
numerous physicians in the area. His brother Fred was a dentist
in Cripple Creek in the 1890s and also ended up in Colorado Springs.
On a side note, Fred married a woman named Anna B.
In
addition to a dental practice and raising three children, she was
also active in the church and the WTCU (Women's Christian Temperance
Union) and in the late 1890s was the president of the local
organization of the WTCU. She and her husband along with Wm. H. Dewey and
Oscar J. Fullerton created the Fullerton Consumption Cure Company
with an initial investment of $30,000. Colorado Springs was one of the meccas for those searching the cure for consumption, having clean air and lots of sunshine to mention a few of the reasons for people heading this way. Dr. Edwin Solly had traveled from England to the area with his wife seeking a cure. His wife passed, but he recovered. His writings and pamphlets at the beginning of the region probably helped in bringing invalids to the area.
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| Photo property of the author |
After
her death her husband moved to California and remarried. After his
death in 1928, his second wife returned his body to Colorado Springs.
He is buried near Anna in Evergreen Cemetery.
Doris Gardner-McCraw -
Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History
Colorado and Women's History
Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet
Books: Angela Raines Books
Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here
