This is a transcription of the Martha J. Flanders biography from New Hampshire Women: A Collection of Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Daughters and Residents of the Granite State, Who are Worthy Representatives of their Sex in the Various Walks and Conditions of Life, The New Hampshire Publishing Co., Concord, NH, 1895, page 27.
Martha J. Flanders
MARTHA J. FLANDERS, one of the pioneer woman physicians, was born in Concord, Jan. 15, 1823, the daughter of David and Martha (Straw) Flanders. At the age of three she attended a district school in Hopkinton, and afterwards was a pupil at Miss Susan Ela’s noted school in Concord. Later she was graduated from the New Hampton Seminary. After teaching some years in the West and South she began the study of medicine with the late Dr. Alpheus Morrill of Concord, one of the first physicians to perceive that “woman needed the profession and the profession needed woman.” She gained her diploma at the New England Female College, now merged in the Boston University School of Medicine. She practised in Concord in connection with Dr. Morrill from 1861 to 1863, and both women and men of her native state gave her kindly encouragement and support. She was the first woman physician in Concord. She finally located in Lynn, Mass., where she has ever since resided. No people could have been more kind and loyal than have been her patrons in that Quaker city of radical reformers. She has had the pleasure of seeing the barriers against women thrown down by medical societies, being herself a member of county, state, and national societies, also for several years lecturer in a co-educational medical school.