Isabel Chapin

Isabel Chapin was born April 17, 1845 in Irasburg, Vermont to Dr. and Mrs. Hayes   She often accompanied her father on his medical calls and assisted at home with farm duties. Her parents were forward thinkers and impressed upon all of their children the value of a good education and the recognition of one’s abilities regardless of their gender, “your mother and I both believe girls should do whatever they’re capable of doing…”     At eighteen she married William Chapin who was a Congregational minister.  Just a few weeks later she boarded the Sydenbam with her husband and beloved cat to begin the five month journey to Bombay.

The Chapins had planned to do missionary work in India for ten years but William soon succumbed to diphtheria leaving Isabel a nineteen year old widow.  She stayed alone for six months in India then returning to the United States to study medicine in order to return to India as a medical missionary.

While studying medicine she fell in love with a patient, Samuel Barrows and they married in 1867. He supported her while she pursued her medical degree after which she supported him while he attended Harvard Divinity School to become a Unitarian minister.  Isabel attended the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children then sent a year abroad at the University of Vienna specializing in ophthalmology.  Meanwhile, Sam took a job in Washington D.C., as stenographic secretary to  Secretary of State, William H. Seward. 

Upon her return to America, Isabel opened a private practice in the capital and taught diseases of the eye at Howard University’s School of Medicine.  When Sam became ill, she stepped into his position with Seward and because the first woman stenographic reporter in Congress, the first woman ever to be employed by the State Department and possibly the only female State Department employee to receive the same salary as a man.