#52 Ancestors 2019 Week 26 Legend: Dr. Emily Hammond Wilson, Legendary Medicine Woman

Emily Cumming Hammond, the oldest of eight children of Christopher Cashel Hammond and Mary Gwynn, (my first cousin, twice removed), was born in 1904, and grew up on a 1000-acre plantation in rural South Carolina.  She described herself as a "headstrong tomboy" who loved to treat and bandage animals as well as helping her mother tend to family and neighbors, both black and white, when they needed doctoring. By the age of 13, she had acquired the nickname "Doc."

Emily ca. 1930

She attended Mount St. Agnes and Goucher College in Baltimore, staying with her aunt, my great-grandmother, Louise Gwynn Scrivener.  She graduated from the Medical College of George in 1927, the only woman in her class and just the second woman to graduate from the institution.  After interning at the Central of Georgia Railway Hospital in Savannah, she accepted a position to do medical research at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.  But when she heard that the country doctor in southern Anne Arundel County had died, she took a bus to her future. 

According to her account, the folks in rural Anne Arundel County were not very keen on a woman doctor.  Her first patient was a dog that had been hit by a car.  Fortunately, the dog thrived and so did the young doctor's practice. 

House Call ca. 1950

She made house calls on horseback, or by tractor when the roads were too muddy.  Charging $1 for an office visit or $15 for delivery of a baby at home, she was often paid with bushels of oysters, dozens of eggs, or farm produce.

Obligation Farm 2010

She married John Fletcher Wilson in 1932 and moved her office to her husband's family farm in Lothian.  The couple had two sons and Dr. Wilson often took the boys with her on house calls, leaving them outside while she made her visit. The couple later purchased historic Obligation Farm, built in the 1740's by Thomas Stockett, enlarged by his grandson in the 1800's, and lovingly restored by the Wilsons. 

Dr. Wilson's waiting room was open to both blacks and whites, with patients served in the order of arrival or according to the seriousness of their ailment, a situation somewhat unusual for the times, when the hospital in Annapolis refused to deliver African-American babies. According to her biographer, Therese Magnotti, "she never refused to go out on a call, no matter the time, no matter the weather.  She never played favorites."

Dr. Wilson was denied admission into the Annapolis hospital and turned down when she first applied to the local medical society, but she later became chief of staff at what is now Anne Arundel Medical Center and president of its medical society.  She established clinics to treat syphilis and enlisted the county's help to set up clinics for general medical and prenatal care.  She diagnosed the first case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in Maryland shortly after WWII.  The disease was so unusual in the eastern states that doctors from Baltimore came to her office to observe.

Dr. Emily Hammond Wilson, fondly referred to as "Doc," retired after 53 years in practice and died at the age of 103 on July 10, 2007, a beloved legend of Southern Maryland.







References:

Magnotti, Therese. Doc: The Life of Emily Hammond Wilson. Published by the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society.

"Emily Hammond Wilson Walker MD (1994-2007)." MSA SC 3520-14731.  Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series).