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SUSAN McKINNEY STEWARD: NEW YORK STATE'S FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN PHYSICIAN
Susan Marie Smith, who was born in 1847, spent her early childhood in the family home located at 189 Pearl Street in Brooklyn's Weeksville section. Susan was the seventh of ten children of Sylvanus and Anne S. Smith. Although some Brooklyn directories listed Sylvanus Smith as a porter, jobber, carpet cleaner or laborer, he earned a respectable and profitable living from driving and selling hogs.
The Smith family resided at 189 Pearl Street from 1830 to early 1857 when they moved a few doors away to 213 Pearl Street. Fourteen years later the family made their home at 243 Pearl Street.
As a child Susan was provided with organ lessons from the famed John Zundel and Henry Eyre Brown. "This training," reported a friend, "enabled her to teach in the public school system of Washington, D.C. for two years." Her musical training later enabled her to become the organist and choir director for Brooklyn's Siloam Presbyterian, and Bridge Street A.M.E. Churches.
Although some contemporary papers erroneously reported that Susan Smith was the first African-American female doctor in the United States, in fact she was the third. She was the first in New York State. Rebecca Lee, graduate of the New England Female Medical College in 1864, and Rebecca J. Cole, graduate of the Woman's Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1867, preceded Susan. Her career, however, was the most illustrious of the three.
It is not known why young Susan chose medicine as a career. Her older sister, Sarah, was an educator of some repute in Manhattan and Brooklyn. A teaching career would have been a "normal" pursuit for a young lady in the nineteenth century, but Susan was a progressive person who wanted more. It is possible that the death of two of Susan's brothers during the Civil War caused her to dedicate her life to curing people. Three other factors, perhaps, encouraged her to seek a medical career. In 1864, three years before Susan entered medical school, the New York legislature, on April 14, passed a bill "enabling the New York Infirmary for Women to confer the title of M.D. with a view of extending the facilities for the medical education of women." In...