Ann Preston, M.D. (1813-1872)
London Grove Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
A pioneer physician and educator, in 1860 Preston founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she later established one of the nation's first nurses' training schools. A graduate of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, she became its dean in 1865, the first American woman to hold such an office. She was a Quaker dedicated to women's rights and an abolitionist involved with the Underground Railroad. Preston was born here.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Born on this Chester County land in 1813, Ann Preston broke barrier after barrier in a world that barred women from medicine. A graduate of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, she became its dean in 1865 — the first American woman to hold such a post — and in 1860 founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, later adding one of the nation's earliest nurses' training schools. A Quaker, she was also an abolitionist tied to the Underground Railroad.
Why it matters
Preston helped open the medical profession to women and to trained nurses, proving that women could not only practice medicine but lead the institutions that taught it.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ann Preston
Related events
- · Underground Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fanny M. Jackson Coppin
Thornbury Township, PA · est. 1986
Born into slavery, Fanny Jackson Coppin bought her way toward freedom and learning, graduating from Oberlin College in 1865. For more than three decades she led the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, pioneering industrial arts and formal teacher training for Black students. The school she guided endured and grew, becoming today's Cheyney University.
Lincoln University
Lower Oxford Township, PA · est. 1967
Chartered in 1854 as the Ashmun Institute, this school was founded by the Rev. John Miller Dickey to provide higher education to men of African ancestry at a time when almost no such opportunity existed in America. Renamed Lincoln University in 1866, it opened its doors as an interracial and international institution. It became one of the nation's first degree-granting historically Black colleges, educating generations of leaders across the United States and Africa.
Ida Ella Ruth Jones (1874-1959)
East Fallowfield Township, PA · est. 2004
Ida Ella Ruth Jones, the daughter of a formerly enslaved man, took up her brushes late in life and produced more than 300 works in her seventies and eighties. Working in watercolor, oil, and pencil in a plain folk-art style, she painted the rural Chester County she knew—family and farm life, landscapes, early machines, and memories of slavery. She lived out her long life on a nearby farm.
Dr. Charlotte Moore Sitterly (1898-1990)
East Fallowfield Township, PA · est. 2005
Born in the Quaker village of Ercildoun in Chester County, Charlotte Moore Sitterly became one of the leading physicists of her era. A career researcher with the U.S. Bureau of Standards, she authored more than a hundred books and articles and produced authoritative reference tables on the spectra of the sun and other elements. Honored by the American Astronomical Society in 1937, she became the first woman elected to Britain's Royal Astronomical Society in 1949.