DR. MERCY B. JACKSON

Dr. MERCY B. JACKSON, of Boston, is deserving of high place among the physicians who have done pioneer work, and helped to make the path easier for the women who come after them.

She was the daughter of Constant Ruggles, Esq., and was born in Hardwick, Mass., Sept. 17, 1802. In 1823 she married Rev. John Bisbee, a Universalist pastor in Hartford, Conn., and afterward in Portland, Me. In the midst of his work, her husband died suddenly, leaving her with two children to support. She at once opened a school for young ladies in Portland. Superintending her house, doing the sewing for herself and little ones, studying French and Spanish with a view to making herself more competent as a teacher, and giving lessons in drawing on Wednesdays and Saturdays, filled every hour with its special work ; and the unremitting toil soon began to tell upon her health.

In 1833 she married Capt. Daniel Jackson, and assumed the place of mother to his four children. Her two made six in the family; and to these eight more of their own were added, making her the mother and stepmother of fourteen in all.

Mrs. Jackson is a remarkable woman, or she could never have accomplished so much in caring for the physical and intellectual needs of her large family.

The time came after her husband's death, and the children were old enough to be left, that she felt herself at liberty to take a regular course of study in the New England Medical College, though she had practised already eighteen years in Plymouth, Mass. Since receiving her diploma, she has been established in Boston, commanding a large and lucrative practice, and numbering among her patients some of the first families in the city and the adjacent towns. Too fully occupied by her profession to devote much time to any other work, Dr. Jackson is an earnest sympathizer with the reforms of the day, and a judicious friend to her own sex.

Every year of her successful and beneficent life has been an eloquent argument in favor of a more thorough education for woman, and her right to work in any field of labor to which she feels attracted. Long may her motherly presence be felt among the reformers of our times !

Source: Daughters of America or Women of the Century by Phebe A. Hanaford Published by True and Company, Augusta, Maine, 1883.

Submitted by Deborah Crowell