Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England, and moved with her family to New York at eleven and later to Cincinnati. Her father, a sugar refiner who opposed slavery, died soon after, and she worked as a teacher to support her family. A dying friend told her she would have suffered less if she had been treated by a woman doctor, and Blackwell decided to become one. In 1847 Geneva Medical College in New York accepted her after the students, thinking it was a joke, voted to admit her. She faced hostility but graduated first in her class in 1849. She continued her training in Paris, where an eye infection caught from a patient cost her sight in one eye and ended her hope of becoming a surgeon, and in London. Back in New York, unable to get hospital posts, she opened a dispensary for poor women and children, and in 1857, with her sister Emily and Marie Zakrzewska, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, later adding a medical college for women. She moved to England in 1869 and died in 1910.

Faith: Raised by a Congregationalist father; she attended services of many denominations. Her adult beliefs are not well documented. Source: Wikipedia