The life and times of Greene County’s first female doctor
Beth Teagarden Day, left, and Arlene Teagarden Lantzer hold a medical kit, used between 1853 and 1929, during the Cornerstone Genealogical Society’s meeting in July.
Cornerstone Genealogical Society
WAYNESBURG – The Cornerstone Genealogical Society at its July meeting was presented with a program of the life and times of Dr. Phoebe Jane “Dr. Jane” Teagarden, Greene County’s first female doctor.
Beth Teagarden Day and Arlene Teagarden Lantzer, who are the first cousins, four times removed of Dr. Teagarden, presented the program.
Dr. Teagarden was a graduate of Waynesburg College and Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. She is a daughter of Isaac Newton and Sarah Parker Teagarden and was born March 25, 1841. She died January 11, 1922, and was buried in Green Mount Cemetery.
Dr. Jane’s great maternal grandmother was Sarah Jane Price Parker Ackley. Sarah Jane married John Parker Sr., and they had one child, John Parker, Jr. After John’s death, of smallpox, Sarah then married Daniel Ackley, and they had six children. Sarah, now a widow again, and decided to leave Luzerne County with her children and go to Greene County, (a trip which is a little over 700 miles) where her oldest son, John Parker Jr., Dr. Jane’s maternal grandfather, was living.
It was here Sarah made an impression on the community because of her courage, honesty, wise counsel and helping hands. Dr. Jane wrote of her great grandmother, “The daily and hourly heroism, with which this rare, refined gentlewoman faced the dangers and hardships of frontier life, cannot be told, but a precious heirloom to her descendants, is the memory of her noble life.”
Isaac Newton Teagarden, Dr. Jane’s father, was a millwright and erected a lot of mills in Greene County and built the mill machinery. He served in the Civil War in Company F 85th Reg. Pennsylvania Vol., at the age of 54. He was discharged in 1863 because of illness. He was jury commissioner in Greene County in 1873 and the first to allow blacks to serve on a jury.
She and her sister, Charity, moved to Iowa and taught school for a while, but did eventually move back to Greene County.
Legend has it Dr. Jane had a sweetheart in the Civil War, but died, because of inattention, on the battlefield. This incident, supposedly, is what led her to want to become a doctor. She also, had a cousin, Leroy Fields, who fought with the Union Army. From a letter that Leroy wrote to Dr. Jane, he says, ” … shelter under the glorious old stars and stripes. May God hasten the day when it shall wave over every state in this now-corrupted nation without opposition and that foul succession rag be trampled in the dust so low that it may never be seen again.”
While a student at the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, Dr. Jane heard and met Susan B. Anthony. In May 1880, Dr. Jane met Ms. Anthony at the W&W train station, in Waynesburg. While in Waynesburg, Ms. Anthony gave two lectures, a talk at the Town Hall and was driven to Carmichaels, by Dr. A.B. Miller, president of Waynesburg College, to give a talk.
At the society’s business meeting, it was announced that the August field trip to the Crouse School House was canceled and will be rescheduled. The next meeting will be Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. with Alice Souders, who will speak about Marjorie Merriweather Post. Meetings are held in the log courthouse on East Greene Street and are open to the public.