Edith Stratton Kitt

Edith Stratton Kitt

In her own words: “I was born in Florence, Arizona Territory, on December 15, 1878. That birth was really quite an experience for my father since I arrived while he was scouring the town looking for the only doctor, whom he found later, drunk and playing cards in the back room of a saloon.  The small house in which I was born had dirt walls, a dirt floor and a dirt roof. There was only one board floor in the village and that was in the most prosperous saloon.  Once in a while the townspeople would clear out the bar and hold dances in this saloon.  All the mothers brought their babies and pub them to bed on a long bench.  Mother was from New England, but she did go to these dances until some man sat on me.  After that, she refused to go any more.

Our home was thirty miles from Tucson as the crow flies, but seventy five as the road crawled.  Mother was once on the ranch for eight months without seeing another American woman.”

Edith enjoyed a tomboyish youth; doing chores, riding and hunting.  She began riding as a baby in a sling from an old tablecloth knotted around her father’s neck and shoulder.  She eventually graduated to her own horse, “Little Bill” and was given her first shotgun at ten with which she hunted quail, duck, deer and skunk, because “skunk skins were worth fifty cents to a dollar and in one season I made fifteen dollars.”

She studies at the University of Arizona and became a teacher and taught in Colorado and Tucson for several years before marrying George Kitt in 1903.

She transcribed many oral histories over the years and was secretary of the Arizona Historical Society (formerly the Pioneer’s Historical Society. She is credited with making this library one of the top research centers in the Southwest. 

Ann Preston

Ann Preston

Ann was born December 1, 1813 in the Quaker settlement of West Grove in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. She attended school but also helped care for her six younger siblings as her mother’s health was poor.  She was also active in the local anti-slavery society.

When her siblings grew to be more independent she began teaching.  At this time she also became interested in physiology and recognizing the need for more information on the subject, she initiated classes in female physiology and hygiene for women and girls.

In 1847 she embarked on a two year apprenticeship with Dr. Nathaniel Moseley in Philadelphia. Completing the apprenticeship she applied to four medical colleges in Pennsylvania but was rejected solely because she was female. In 1850 a group of Quakers founded the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania to meet the needs of the many women seeking a career in medicine.  Just shy of her thirty seventh birthday Ann enrolled in the first class with seven other women.

After graduating she remained at the college as a professor of physiology and hygiene.  In 1858 she initiated a fundraising campaign to build a woman’s hospital in connection with the college to provide hands on clinical instruction.

In 1866 Ann was appointed dean of the Woman’s Medical College, the first woman to hold that position. She applied for permission for her students to attend general clinics at the Philadelphia Hospital but was met with demonstrations by male medical students protesting the impropriety of educating men and women in medicine together.  She fought this narrow-mindedness saying women were patients and it was “in accordance with the instincts of the truest womanhood for women to appear as physicians and students.”  Philadelphia newspapers published her comments.